After all, Flandre looked far too young.
Logically speaking, for a child of her apparent age, even if they were endowed with exceptional talent, parents and guardians would naturally exercise extreme caution when introducing them to the study of Originium Arts. Even with the Sarkaz's remarkably high innate Originium resistance, Arts manipulation wasn't something to be played with lightly. A young child's emotional stability and self-control were hardly comparable to those of an adult—what if something went horribly wrong during a casting exercise?
Yet, Flandre's guardian was surprisingly bold, allowing such a young-looking girl to learn and master all sorts of complex, high-tier incantations.
Warfarin stared at Flandre with deep curiosity, wondering what kind of fundamental Originium Arts the child possessed that granted her guardian such absolute confidence to let her study external Magic so freely.
"Originium Arts...? You mean my unique ability, right?"
Flandre quickly realized that the elder vampire was inquiring about the inherent power that set her apart from others. She happily extended her small hand into the air, her face lighting up with a beaming smile.
"Flandre's ability is Destruction!"
"Destruction?" Warfarin repeated, unable to fully grasp the concept, as the term itself was far too broad and vague.
What precisely was being destroyed? Physical objects? Formulated Magic? Spatial barriers?
Flandre nodded enthusiastically. "That's right, it's Destruction! As long as Flandre can see it, she can destroy it!"
The young girl answered without the slightest hint of secrecy or reservation.
"Huh? You can destroy anything you can see?!" Warfarin's eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
"That's right!" Flandre nodded with absolute certainty.
"Can... can I witness it firsthand?" Warfarin expressed her immediate skepticism.
"Sure!"
The moment Flandre agreed, Warfarin grabbed her by the hand, her boots thumping loudly against the floor as she led the girl straight toward one of Rhodes Island's advanced Training Centers.
"How far is the maximum range of your ability?" Warfarin asked as they came to a halt inside the vast testing chamber.
"As long as I can see it clearly," Flandre replied matter-of-factly.
Warfarin nodded, then waved over Closure—Rhodes Island's resident "grease monkey" and chief system engineer—who had been tinkering with mechanical components on a nearby workbench.
After Warfarin whispered frantic explanations to her for a moment, the two led Flandre to one end of the long firing range. Closure tapped a series of commands into a wall console, and a small, palm-sized target popped up at the far end of the facility.
Warfarin pointed toward the distant object. "Is this distance acceptable?"
The gap spanned roughly one hundred meters. At that range, a palm-sized target appeared smaller than a single grain of rice from where they stood. Anyone with less-than-perfect vision would struggle to even pinpoint its location.
Flandre gave a light nod. As someone accustomed to high-speed aerial battles across vast skies, a hundred-meter field of vision was trivial.
"Then show us what you can do!" Warfarin said, stepping back into the observation booth.
At that moment, array after array of complex diagnostic equipment throughout the chamber whirred to life. High-precision sensors scanned Flandre's body, spatial monitors analyzed the air between the two points, and high-speed optical cameras focused directly on the distant target.
Down at the line, Flandre simply raised her small right hand and made a gentle, squeezing motion in the air toward the target.
In the very next millisecond, the distant target underwent a bizarre, unnatural spatial distortion before shattering violently into microscopic fragments!
Closure, who had been calmly monitoring the data readouts, suddenly gasped, her eyes widening in utter shock.
Among the three sets of high-grade diagnostic equipment, the sensors monitoring Flandre showed zero traces of Originium Arts activation. The spatial scanners deployed along the hundred-meter path detected no energy fluctuations or particle movement whatsoever. Only at the exact location of the target did the monitors capture the sudden, violent structural distortion and subsequent disintegration!
The high-speed footage was immediately pulled up and analyzed frame-by-frame, recording every fraction of a second as the target was ripped apart.
"Can... can you do that one more time?" Closure asked, her tone suddenly becoming deadly serious.
"Can we make it a bit harder? This is far too easy," Flandre suggested, indicating that destroying a wooden target at this range imposed zero strain on her.
After another rapid exchange of whispers between the two adults, Warfarin stepped forward to confirm a specific detail. "I recall you saying your ability allows you to destroy whatever you can see, correct?"
Flandre nodded. "Yes, but it must be direct visual contact. If you show me a television screen, a printed photograph, or a recorded video, even though I can see the people or objects inside, I cannot destroy them through the screen."
Flandre clearly outlined the boundaries of her power, clarifying that it was strictly limited to direct line-of-sight and couldn't perform the terrifying feat of eliminating a target through a live broadcast.
Those words allowed both Warfarin and Closure to let out a collective breath of relief.
After all, if she possessed the ability to destroy targets through recorded media or broadcasts, Flandre would instantly become the most terrifying, unstoppable assassin in the history of Terra. With nothing more than a photograph, anyone could drop dead at any moment—a power far more absolute than a certain legendary Death Note. Such an ability would strike existential dread into the heart of every ruler and faction on the planet.
Even with that limitation, what Flandre had described—and demonstrated—remained fundamentally absurd.
Following a quick consultation, Warfarin and Closure deployed a heavy, reinforced glass barrier between Flandre and the target area. Although the glass was crystal clear, allowing an unobstructed view of the distant marker, a solid physical barrier now separated them.
Warfarin turned to her. "Will this interfere with your ability?"
Flandre shook her head cheerfully. "Not at all!"
With that, she raised her hand once more.
In the very next instant, the target at the far end distorted in the exact same unnatural manner before collapsing into fine dust!
Having completed the action, Flandre dusted off her hands, looking entirely unbothered.
Beside her, Closure's fingers blurred across her terminal keyboard at blinding speed. Every single environmental sensor, Arts detector, and spatial monitor in the entire Training Center had been running at maximum capacity.
Yet, not a single trace of Originium Arts casting could be detected!
If it wasn't an Originium Arts activation, how on earth was the target being destroyed?
Refusing to accept the baffling data, Closure had Flandre repeat the test several more times under varying conditions, but the result remained stubbornly identical. No casting signatures were ever detected. The moment Flandre's slender hand squeezed the air, the target would undergo extreme physical distortion and suffer catastrophic structural failure, disintegrating on the spot.
"Alright, that is enough! Closure, you have more than enough data samples to analyze," Warfarin interrupted, stepping in to stop Closure from pushing further out of concern that continuous casting might cause physical strain to the child.
Closure buried her face in her hands, staring blankly at the readouts on her screens, completely unable to reconcile the data with physical reality. "This... this isn't scientific! It isn't even Magic!"
Through frame-by-frame synchronization, Closure discovered that the time lag between Flandre's hand squeeze and the target's destruction was merely a few hundredths of a second. If it were an electromagnetic signal, it could indeed cross that distance instantaneously. But not only was the path between them a complete blank on all detection equipment, even the destroyed targets exhibited pure, brutal physical structural tearing!
What made it even more absurd was that the last two targets Closure had deployed were not simple wooden dummies like the first.
One was a heavy combat target constructed of solid D32 steel—a high-density alloy target specifically utilized by Scout to test maximum armor-penetration capabilities.
The other was a solid block of Five-Water Grinding Stone, a premium, ultra-dense material renowned for its incredible hardness and used primarily in the precision machining of military-grade weapon components.
Yet, both of those specialized, high-durability materials had met the exact same fate as the wooden target, suffering total, instantaneous structural disintegration. And from Flandre's completely relaxed expression, it was glaringly obvious that destroying high-density alloy and ultra-hard stone required no more effort than snapping a toothpick.