The mystery woman was lying about keeping herself at the same level as the four of them?

  Sparks scattered in the air and the ring of metal on metal filled the thick jungle that the five combatants fought in. Flashes of blue and gleaming orange eyes searing themselves into Alec’s mind as he watched his two friends, and Glenn, get cut down in short order.

  No. She’s not moving particularly faster than the four of them. Nor is she necessarily hitting with anymore strength.

  The woman leapt from her position directly for Alec, having caught that he was revived and watching. Her sword came screaming right for his head, only missing by the narrowest of margins as he threw himself to the side and rolled clumsily to his feet.

  She’s moving at almost the exact same pace as they were, but there was something else.

  His blade met hers in a small wave of wind and the high-pitched screech of metal on metal. His hair waved in the breeze as the two of them clashed blades again and again. The young man constantly trying to find some chink, some weakness in her defence that he could use to break through.

  They moved at nearly the same speed, but her blade always met his first. Her blade always cleared the gap faster.

  Alec gasped in pain as he narrowly avoided having his chest ripped open by one of her thrusts, getting away with only a deep slice that he’s pretty sure hit one of his ribs.

  His blade came at her side. Hers snapped into place and skipped along the flat of his blade, slipping straight past his defence and into his torso.

  She wasn’t overwhelming them with pure speed or brute force, Alec realized in that exact moment. This mystery woman was brutalizing them with nothing but her inhuman, ascendant skill and technique.

  The final five seconds of his fight played in the forefront of his mind as his body slumped forward, and his face met the red grass and thick mud. Repeating again and again, faster and faster until finally-

  Once more. Everything went black.

  XXXxxxXXX

  “Dammit!”

  To Olivia’s right, Glenn hit the ground like a sack of bricks and stayed there, hints of red along his neck and shoulder that clued Olivia in as to exactly what had occurred to him. Though it’s not like she particularly needed to check to know, not after how many times she had killed them all. How many times she would continue to do so.

  Olivia had it down to a science by now. They were dead for precisely three seconds past the point where everything stopped functioning and the world went black. Her strength also continued to return to her faster and faster with each death that she underwent. Something that was probably a cause for concern, but not something that she cared to think about at the moment.

  The woman in front of them was careful to stagger all of their deaths so that all four were very rarely alive and capable of acting at the same time. She couldn’t avoid it entirely, of course, but she was always quick to put one of them in the ground when she realized that they were all up and moving. Which was starting to become a problem now, and Olivia had the sinking sensation that she was the only one of the group that realized it.

  This woman was facing them only using the techniques of the Dragon-Scale school, and only a select few of them as well. She had only begun to use them after watching one of the four of them use it first, as well. Which meant that she was purposefully locking her arsenal away. Why this was, Olivia couldn’t even begin to put an answer to, however it meant that her arsenal was very firmly locked to match theirs.

  With one notable exception.

  Olivia made a leaping swipe at the woman’s side, her teeth grit and her eyes burning as an almost shimmering barrier of lines of silver mana surrounded the woman for a brief moment. The Kio daughter’s sword bouncing harmlessly off the split-second sphere as she dashed past the woman. The woman in question finishing her technique off with an arm –two fingers extended towards her– pointed towards Olivia, her blade held level with her head and behind her, and one of her legs curled inwards, raised off the ground.

  Swirling silver coated the woman’s blade, and it lashed forward, a flying blade of mana surging off it like an arrow fired from a bow and bursting clean through Olivia’s torso like she was made of wet paper, and not blood and bone.

  She could feel blood spraying from the wound and seeping into her clothes yet again, but she was a bit too pre-occupied with doing her best to stave off the growing darkness in her vision to pay too much attention to such a thing.

  ‘I knew it. The timing on those extra techniques-‘

  Everything went dark and she lost all sense of control or feeling. A deep, almost horrifying cold seeping into her so quickly that everything that she was wanted to pull away and snap at the feeling.

  Then, her eyes snapped open once more, the deep cold retreating from her memory like the darkness of night before the overwhelming might of the sun except for the lingering, phantom sensation of its grasp on her.

  She had heard, vaguely, of that concept in passing. The chill of death. Supposedly it was meant to be the brains way of translating the loss of bodily functions and the danger that the body was in. Having experienced it for about four and a half minutes now, Olivia knew that that wasn’t the whole story.

  With her limited knowledge on the Goddess of Death and their minions, she couldn’t claim any actual, fact-backed hypothesis’. However, with her own study into wild beasts and how they tended to react in all manner of environments and situations, and her fresh new experience, she had an idea as to why the body felt the chill of death.

  To scare the body into acting, almost forcing one to run away from death and back into the embrace of life.

  The first few times she had experienced it, even the lingering phantom sensation of that chill had frozen her to her core. Had made doing anything except panicking a near impossible task. Now though? Now that chill induced a panic that did not make her lock up, but rather forced her into action.

  The sight of Alec facing the woman one on one was a familiar one by now. An almost hauntingly, disgustingly familiar one. Yet Olivia did not jump immediately back into the fray as she saw Callum attempt to do. No, instead she watched. She tracked the way that the woman in front of her moved, who she focused on, what she focused on. Instincts, reflexes, priorities. Those were the most important things to figure out at the moment.

  ‘At the moment, we’re safe from that extended library of techniques she has, but there’s another problem entirely.’

  For the first time in the entire fight, the woman made a clear offensive on Alec and missed entirely as his blade snapped into position to knock hers away. The resulting Crushing Claw that the woman released cleaved clean through Alec, his blade, and Callum as well.

  ‘There it is. But that reaction…’ Olivia thought to herself, slowly raising to her feet.

  The entire battle ground to a halt as the woman seemed to realize what she had done, staring in annoyance at the shattered half of Alec’s blade resting against a nearby tree root.

  Even when both Alec and Callum got back to their feet, one far faster than the other, the battle didn’t resume. Burning orange eyes only looked between the snapped blade of Alec’s sword and the surrounding forest in expectation, only to scowl darkly when nought but a soft breeze met her glare.

  “Really? Infinite lives are perfectly fine against me, but losing a weapon is where you cross the line?” The woman damn-near snarled into the air, fist curled up at her side.

  Once more, there was no reaction or answer to the woman’s question, even as rhetorical as it may have been.

  Off to the side of their small battleground, Olivia couldn’t help but agree with the woman. For all of them, but especially Alec, the continued usage of his blade was an absolute must if they wanted to pass this Step of the trial. If they were mages, this wouldn’t be too much of an issue but-

  ‘Ah. Of course. No wonder it doesn’t care if Alec’s blade got shattered.’ Olivia realized, expression flat and eyes burning in indignation and rage.

  This was a ritual created by mages and, most likely, utilized almost exclusively by mages within the Church of Kronethia. No wonder there was no ground given or mercy rewarded to martial types like them. The trial simply wasn’t built to keep them in mind. How…..small minded.

  Honestly, Olivia found herself disappointed. A trial, likely some kind of grand ritual in terms of classification, like this, and they hadn’t even thought about non-mages when crafting it? She had heard a lot of things about the Church of Kronethia, so she had expected more. She should have known better.

  “Feh. Fine then.” The woman scowled, holding her free arm out to the side and with bulging muscles and tensed fingers, fired a chunk of bone a bit longer than her own arm out of her palm.

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  The air cracked, and sawdust exploded out of the tree that the bone had been fired into. The four teens stood or crouched, completely frozen; their gazes either locked on the woman or the tree that her new ability had suddenly just been revealed on.

  “Stings like a bitch.” The woman grumbled, flexing her fingers and shaking her arm out.

  Her steps over to the unnaturally long bone were silken-smooth and uncontested, none of the teens knowing what to do and not willing to rush in while she was, undeniably, planning something.

  “Hmm, could use a bit of work…” Her hand grasped one end of the bone and ripped it out of the tree entirely, a silver sheen coating it as she held it at eye height.

  ‘It’s…emitting smoke?’ Olivia thought, blinking a couple of times and squinting suspiciously at the woman and her new instrument of violence.

  ‘No, its shape is changing. That’s dust, not smoke…’ Alec realized, his eyes widened, ‘She’s using her mana to whittle it down. But what is she- No way.’

  A blur of white surged towards Alec, his hand snapped up to catch it before he even realized that he was moving, his mind too pre-occupied on his realization to consciously react. Slowly, his eyes drifting a few degrees upwards to focus on the item now held within his grasp. A double-edged blade with a thin profile and very little handguard to speak of.

  70 centimetres from handguard to tip and a further 19 centimetres from pommel to handguard, it was far from a large blade, but also not a small one either. The design wasn’t one that he recognized though, so clearly nothing from the south region of the Western Continent.

  “That’s a jian, from Hama.” The woman called out, as if somehow able to read his thoughts, “Bit lighter than what you’re used to, a little thinner than normal, too. But that’s because of the crafting method.”

  Her following scoff was accompanied by a simple wave of her hand.

  “Shitty work at best, but it will at least hold up for the rest of the Trial.”

  But Alec wasn’t listening to her, his gaze transfixed on the blade in his grasp and the brief wisps of mana that still clung to it, having been a creation of the woman’s own hand and refined further by her own mana.

  ‘This feeling. The mana feels….sharp.’

  He called up his own mana in response, feeling a flare of irritation when he compared to the sharpness of his mana to the sharpness of this woman’s. It was night and day. Comparing his own mana to the woman’s was like putting a priceless, immensely loved kitchen knife next to a crude, rusted cleaver. While both could still be considered sharp, only an idiot would ever claim that the rusted cleaver had the same kind of edge as the polished, cared for knife.

  However, if he took the feeling of those faint wisps that had now disappeared entirely, and tried to imitate that within his own mana…

  Alec’s take-off was less abrupt and more explosive. The teen surging across the blood-soaked earth and swinging out at her midsection in a sudden burst of motion that left the rest of his team unable to react in the slightest.

  Blade met blade, and the ground beneath the two of them segmented. Paper cuts sliced open along Alec’s skin and frayed the edges of his shirt, but he hardly cared. His mind buzzing like a hive of mildly irritated insects and goosebumps raised along his arms, body flying through the air as she swung out with her sword and sent him hurtling towards the canopy.

  Like with all of her attacks, if his blade hadn’t already been in the way, it would have cut him in twain. But he couldn’t even find it in himself to focus on that danger, too focused on the stinging of his myriad cuts and the sensations they invoked.

  Blindly, with his free hand, he grasped a branch and arrested his momentum to a halt. The teen pulling himself in to crouch low on the branch, wobbling a little unsteadily but keeping his balance as he stared down at the woman with eyes that didn’t see her at all.

  “Hah! There we go. That was almost sharp.” The woman mocked, her smile all teeth and her eyes glowing subtly as she pointed a singular finger at him and curled it in.

  He was moving before even he realized it. Not towards the woman, not directly, but rather through the trees and jungle that surrounded them. His movements were chaotic, unstable, but more energetic than he had ever felt in his life; thin gashes and shallow slashes following behind him as he leapt from branch to branch and trunk to trunk. Flying sparks and static beneath his skin and buzzing in his mind.

  “Now what on earth is he…?” The woman muttered to herself, almost in amusement if the remaining three teens had to guess, as she looked around and tilted her head slightly.

  Olivia wished that she had an answer, but she hadn’t ever seen Alec acting like this before.

  No, she had. Once before, to a much lesser degree. During the [Gold-rank] quest that the two of them had gone on. When she had fallen under a somewhat similar state herself. But what was that even meant to be? Why was it appearing now?

  “Ah. Of course.” The woman chuckled to herself, placing a palm on her forehead and shaking her head as if chiding herself, “How could I forget? He has that disposition.”

  Olivia wanted to question what ‘that disposition’ was meant to mean, but before she could, the woman was gone.

  Clangs of metal ran out through the jungle canopy and branches swayed and groaned beneath the stress of handling their weight. Yet to the two swordsmen it might as well have been non-existent.

  ‘I don’t get this feeling at all.’ Alec’s left foot went flying as he was just a moment too late in raising his leg above the lightning-fast strike, but such an inconsequential wound didn’t matter in the slightest.

  Between the buzzing in his head, and the adrenaline in his veins, the pain never even reached him. Had he not seen his foot go flying off, he might not have even realized that it happened.

  ‘Why do I feel like this? What’s this strange yearning?’

  The woman’s blade cut him open from pelvis to clavicle, and he went soaring out of the trees, his hair waving in the wind and droplets of blood raining after him like the sparkling tail of a comet.

  ‘I want-’

  Alec hit the blood-soaked mud within the small battlefield of his team, and everything went black.

  The woman descended from the canopy like a meteor made flesh, her eyes wide and her teeth gleaming in a small ray of sunlight, blade held at her side and ears pressed back.

  “What the hell is your problem!?” Callum growled, launching himself at her and trying to meet his blade with hers, much as Alec had done before.

  Their impact, her regular slash against his Iron Scale, shook the air around them and threw the green-haired teen into the ground while arresting most of the woman’s momentum to a complete stop, where Glenn was already rushing in.

  “Just fucking die already!” The large, bullish boy screamed, leaping to her airborne height in a surge of mana and raising his blade over his head at the last moment in an attempt not to completely telegraph his attack.

  To the woman, who turned her head to face him with a look so bored it might as well have been carved from stone, it was such an obvious ploy that it was insulting he even thought it would work in the first place.

  Before the teen could even properly start his swing, the woman’s arm snapped out and grabbed him by the throat. Her fingers curled and her arm ripped back, a chunk of bloody flesh hitting the ground a good half a second before Glenn’s lifeless body did.

  “Honestly, why does that big one even keep trying?” The woman muttered to herself, the tips of her shoes touching down on the ground as a sword came screaming for her side.

  Orange eyes snapped to the side and every joint in her lower body slackened at once, Olivia’s blade slicing through nothing as the woman lay with her feet and shoulder blades on the ground. Rather than attempt to block or parry while still falling from her fight with Alec, the woman had let her momentum do the work for her; her legs crumpling instantly and allowing her to drop far faster than initially expected.

  Meanwhile, Olivia’s eyes widened in shock and surprise, unable to help it in the face of such ungodly battle instincts. She had timed it as perfectly as she could to make it impossible for the woman to escape, and yet she had managed to do so anyway. Just what couldn’t this woman do?

  The Kio girl felt her body jerk left and right a couple of times and a familiar, painful warmth in her abdomen as something pierced clean through her. Her blade slipping from her grip and her body tumbling ungracefully to the mud.

  “Shit.” The woman laughed disbelievingly, lowering her outstretched arm to the ground and pushing herself back upright before she started to viciously shake her whole limb out.

  ‘Six minutes and the four of them are already starting to improve.’ Her gaze slid from the three dead ones to the newly awoken Alec, narrowing a little at the gleam in his eyes; as half-formed and hazy as it may have been, ‘That big, bulky one is definitely lagging behind the other three in that department, but its enough to be noticeable. But like always, it’s you that shows the most promise.’

  With one final shake of her arm, she used the tip of her foot to flick her blade back into the air at the perfect point to grab it and make a thrust at Alec right as he did the same to her. The both of them tilting away from their adversary’s sword in an odd mirror of each other.

  “Four minutes left, Dius!” The woman crowed, taking a few steps in as Alec tried to back off and encircle her at the same time, her blade lashing out in a triplicate blur of shining death.

  “Here’s an idea. How about you just shut up.” Alec retorted, parrying one of her strikes and using the momentum to twirl his blade back and around, forcing her to back off, or finally take an injury.

  “I could never! Because I know you! I know you and little miss Hunter over there!” She continued, blocking strike after strike as Alec got into the hang of his circular-style movement, building up more and more momentum with each attack, “You’ll both bitch about it the moment that I bring it up, but you both thrive on high-pressure! So, I’m going to keep ramping it up more and more until you both crack and break!”

  Rather than reply, Alec only narrowed his eyes, diverting an attempted attack at the last second and using the momentum of his would-be strike to spin and curl himself beneath a sudden strike at his lungs, a quick hand pressed against the ground helping right himself once more. His breathing quick and his blade pointed out towards the woman, his free hand held unsteadily at his side as his entire body seemed to jitter ever so slightly.

  “So come now, Dius. Show me what else you can come up with!”

  “No.” Alec muttered, eyes growing wide and unblinking, unsettling in their intensity, “You show me what you have to offer. I want- need to see it all.”

  “Oh?” The woman grinned, all teeth, “How I adore that little quirk of yours.”