Fifth Magic

The Fifth Magic (第五魔法, Dai Go Mahō^?), also known as Magic Blue (魔法・青, Mahō Ao^?), is one of five remaining Magics in the modern age. Its exact domain is unknown, but it has abilities related to Time Travel and making the laws of conservation of mass shoulder the debts of a past without future. According to Alice Kuonji, the Fifth Magic is about deceiving time, equivalent to running a scam.^[1]

Differing from the Second Magic, Third Magic and Fourth Magic, the Fifth Magic was similar to the First Magic, as it was created upon reaching the Root.^[2]

History

Mr. Aozaki, the third generation head of the ancient Aozaki Magus family found a path to the Swirl of the Root however he did not take it himself, wanting a successor to take the path instead.

Mr. Aozaki raised Touko in the way of the magus in his Magical Workshop on the mountains, while Aoko and her parents lived separately. However, when the two girls were 19 and 15 respectively, he suddenly changed the position of successor to Aoko. Despite Touko being a vastly superior magus, Aoko was chosen to inherit the Magic instead of her. Though Touko boasts some of the greatest Magic Circuits in the world, the Fifth Magic does not require such a thing, and it can be said that Aoko's simplicity is more suited to it.^[3]

During 1989, in a magecraft duel between Aoko Aozaki and Touko Aozaki, Aoko opened the path and was granted the Fifth Magic.^[2] The Counter Force attempted to destroy her with lightning, however she was able to survive and successfully activate the Magic. The unknown red shadow was outraged that Aoko would try to use the Fifth without the necessary resolve or reason.^[2]

Effects

The full extent of the Fifth Magic is unknown, and its exact domain is also unknown. It has abilities related to Time Travel, but Touko Aozaki claims there should be more to it than just Time Travel because that is already governed by the Second Magic, but she declines to speculate further on the subject.^[2] According to Alice Kuonji, the Fifth Magic is about deceiving time, equivalent to running a scam.^[4] Its concepts seem to revolve around consumption and extinction. Ars Almadel Salomonis is noted to have parts and hints to what the Fifth Magic is capable of.^[5] The secret of the Fifth Magic lies in "advancing civilization", fitting how Alice represents Medieval Civilization and Aoko represents Consumption Civilization. It also holds the answer as to why she is called the "newest" Magician. ^[6]

Blue requires Aoko's Magic Circuits, while they are only low grade, single function Magic Circuits found in mediocre magi which generates much lower magical energy than her sister.^[7] Their composition makes her Magic Circuits have extraordinary rotational speed, structural durability, quality of output, and fuel efficiency.^[8] As such they are considered special Magic Circuits that enable her to demonstrate the Fifth Magic, and they never run out of magical energy, which makes them one of the factors necessary to depart the planet. After Aoko demonstrates the Fifth Magic, she gains superhuman Magic Circuits, that generate colossal amounts of magical energy. The theory, origin and the spell that made them like that is something that others are completely incapable of comprehending. Aoko herself is just as clueless. Meanwhile, Zelretch, the user of the Second Magic, figured out the gist of it on his first glance at Aoko's Redshift form.^[9]

Activation

In order to activate Blue, she closes her eyes and chants. Creating a whirlwind that causes time to turn back, shifting the landscape through a variety of seasons, as the primal scene is rewritten. The end result is a field of rippling white flowers that erode the world, and the Fifth Magic shows itself in that time and place only. The secluded snowed-in clearing is transformed into a sea of white flowers in an instant, and the previously cold wind becomes warm in the field.^[2]

It is a spring field that is free of impurity and grief, where there was nothing, but also where nothing was needed: Soujuurou's most precious memory. The scenery by itself does not show the true potential of the Magic. Touko acknowledges the change in scenery as somewhat impressive, but comments that what she wanted to see was not something so romantic, and that it is still child's play compared to Alice Kuonji's Flat Snark. It is a large scale spell, but the surrounding mana is no different than it was beforehand.^[2]

Exchanging time

She utilizes two miracles upon her first usage of Blue, the first is moving the five minutes encompassing Soujuurou's death elsewhere. This was her main focus. While complete Resurrection is something that cannot be done even with Magic, and simply restoring his body through healing would not be enough to bring back a dead person. Aoko instead averted his death rather than restore his life. She avoids any large-scale manipulation, either from lack of ability or hesitation, and settles for an exchange between the two of them instead. He is returned to as he was before death, his body looking completely as it was before being sliced in half, effectively reviving him by moving the time of death elsewhere. Having jumped in time for five minutes, he no longer exists on that time axis. Someone from the far future searching for him at that exact point in time would be unable to find him there.^[2]

During this intervention of time, she also borrows ten years worth of his time to bring her future self into the present. This act gives Aoko years of training and experience, by fast forwarding her own time, to go from an apprentice to veteran in an instant. When she performed it with Soujuurou's time, Aoko borrowed his childhood memories as individual time manipulation is easier when working with parts that were forgotten. After transforming she only shows a slight change in appearance, but Touko understands after realizing that Aoko's gestures no longer match her age. The stable running of her Circuits, and even her breathing have changed completely. She realizes that Aoko has become a greater Mage than her in an instant, without amplifying her own Magic Circuits or gaining external Magical Energy.^[2]

This state is called Redshift (赤方偏移, Sekihōhen'i^?).^[10] In Redshift, Aoko acquires red hair, the experience and training of her future self. Furthermore once Aoko demonstrates the Fifth Magic, she gains superhuman Magic Circuits that generate colossal amounts of magical energy.^[9] In addition to the energy they generate, the speed of her Magic Circuits' rotation increases to near lightspeed. ^[11] While she always looks the same in Redshift, her internal time is always slightly different because her state depends on how far into the future the time replacement goes. Additionally the strongest spells she can use also varies.^[9]

She originally meant to take time from herself for the Fifth, but upon stumbling on Soujuurou's memories of the past, she was outraged and decided to take his time instead. Due to this, Soujuurou's ten years of memories belong to Aoko for the duration that the Magic is active.^[2] Despite having taken Soujuurou's time, it does not affect him overtly. Their ages have not changed, so it is not his physical self she has manipulated. It is rather his internal time that has been taken, resulting in her seeing some of his memories during the activation. Despite being in familiar scenery within the white flowers, it feels like the first time he has seen it, only feeling slightly strange to him. Aoko, on the other hand, will feel nostalgia from viewing the area. His memories are jumbled, but he can still recall recent events. He can recall questions asked during the darkness of his death, though he does not remember having died, due to having had some fragments left that intersected with Aoko's time.^[2]

He will be unable to remember until she is done using the time and it is returned. Alice will be the only one able to remember the brief interval of the scenery due to the end of the exchange of time leaving the few minutes lost from his and Aoko's memories. Utilizing another person as a medium means that it is not a change in only Aoko. Aoko travelling back in time by herself would allow for the contradictions to become her own experience, but the exchange is proper time travel that will leave the contradiction properly corrected. Aoko's nostalgia and Soujuurou's unfamiliarity will be corrected at the end of the Magic to be as if they had never existed.^[2]

Utilizing time manipulation, Aoko developed a strategy to shut out outside interference by overlapping time migration effects from 0.1 seconds in the past and 0.1 seconds in the future, effectively granting herself Anti-Purge Defense.^[9] Touko is unable to see through her methods and theorises multiple possibilities. Believing that Aoko is either shifting outside the time axis, using repeated instances of time travel by the second to avoid attacks completely, sending impacting attacks to a different time, or that she is wearing thousands of "herself" over herself.^[2]

Aoko is able to create a Singularity with the Fifth Magic, as seen when she created a Singularity to contain Shiny Star and then sent it into the future by two years in order to create a situation that would undo Soujuurou's death against it in 1999, while simultaneously weakening it enough to defeat it.^[12]

Through Blue, Aoko acquired some form of Eternal youth and cannot age past 20.^[13] Additionally in Melty Blood: Type Lumina, during a commision from Mario Gallo Bestino, Aoko was able to halt his aging with Blue.^[14]

Burden

The Fifth is not the operation of parallel worlds, so it does not rewrite the world itself. That means the time she exchanges must be handled uniquely if she wishes to make the changes permanent, such as in the case with resurrecting Soujuurou. The ten years borrowed from him will be returned, so a one-sided exchange like that will leave the total mass of time in the current time axis unchanged. Winding back only "Soujuurou's five minutes" would normally mean that he would return to being a corpse after the Magic expires, as time travel carried out without changing the world cannot change the past. She has to either truly resurrect him, or take those actually existing five minutes and place them somewhere far away.^[2]

Time travel requires a massive quantity of energy, requiring magical energy to bring in things that don't exist in the current world, and likewise causing tremendous energy to be lost when something is made to be "no longer here." Utilizing time travel to move even such a small amount of time would necessitate balancing out the heat that had been there beforehand. Aoko left it in the far, far future, meaning that the debt incurred in the present has been left in the future. Even the idea of a time paradox is more humane, as such an enormous, thoughtless consumption of heat must not be allowed.^[2]

The idea horrifies Touko, as does the idea of the energy used in cooling the exchanged heat. The state of either more or less heat threatens to cause the collapse of order. The distortion created by her Magic will eventually affect the entire quadrant. Dumping an even greater debt on the death of the universe hundreds of billions years in the future, on to the dead end awaiting humanity, is like the equivalent of hanging a world-ending meteor over the planet. While Touko believes Aoko will crush the planet with her own weight, Aoko says she will worry about it when the time comes and send it to the past the next time, so only it will be crushed by the distortion.^[2]

Touko is still horrified at the idea, saying that only humans will be fine with it. The present is established, but it should not be acceptable to erase the past. The total mass, the debt of the universe, needs to be handled properly. It doesn't matter if the universe is closed or still expanding because the increase in the amount of consumed heat will become uncontrollable. The end of indefinite expansion, indefinite consumption, and indefinite growth is not a future full of hope. It will be the nothing before creation, and the universe will eventually suffer heat death.^[2]

The Fifth will only help make that end more definite, but Aoko says she will take responsibility and do what she can while she lives. She has yet to actually think of such a course.^[2]

Dust of Osiris, calling her "Achiever of the Fifth Law (第五法の到達者, Dai Go-hō no Tōtatsu-sha^?)" believes that Aoko's very existence poses a great threat to her ritual, and she says that Aoko should have nothing to do with it because she is a traveller with no purpose that will not take actions to oppose the end of the world. Aoko supposedly only takes actions against "errors" that become her targets to alter. Dust of Osiris claims that Aoko would, if she insisted, be able to meet her past self, Sion, instead of her current self, but Aoko claims that it's too much trouble. Dust of Osiris also claims that, like her, Aoko also is capable of protecting the Primates, but Aoko wishes to do so as a terrifying, limitless being, and that her Magic should never have existed since it brings no benefit to the lifespan of the planet.^[15]

References