The group all watched as Erin charged towards Tsukuru's newest Summon, her sword out at her side.
Yukina, meanwhile, smirked as she saw the girl charging towards her.
She reached her right arm over towards the closed tessen fan slid into the left side of her obi.
As she pulled it out, she flicked her wrist in a single movement, causing the tessen fan to open.
"Wait," Layla replied, tilting her head in confusion. "Is that…a fan?"
Replicating the "battle animation" Tsukuru had seen when he had first created Yukina, she swung her arm in a wide arc towards her right.
As she did, an intense gust of wind picked up, blowing directly in front of her, filled with a blanket of driving snow.
The sound of a howling wind filled the Assembly Hall, and the temperature in the room dropped significantly.
Feeling the temperature difference, most of the individuals in the room started rubbing their arms.
Tsukuru narrowed his eyes.
'This must be Yukina's 'Cold Front' Skill,' he thought.
***
Back with Erin, she felt as if she was running headfirst into a raging blizzard.
Despite her body having a natural resistance to the cold due to her Ability, she could still feel the strong wind blowing against her skin, trying to push her back.
'She…can control both ice…and wind?' she thought in shock.
As she continued to run, she felt herself beginning to slow down, as if her body was slowly turning to stone.
Looking down, she saw that the Skill wasn't just pushing her back with the wind. The driving snow was causing a thick layer of permafrost to cover her body from head to toe.
'Damn it…' she thought in frustration. 'At this rate…I'll be a frozen statue by the time I reach her!'
She raised her left arm, and extended it out in front of her, but her movements were rigid and choppy, like a robot with rusted joints.
'Hopefully I've regenerated enough of my MC to make at least one projectile!' She thought.
Condensation began to pour off of Erin's open palm, and Ice began to form in front of it. The ice got bigger and bigger, until a large icicle appeared floating in the air in front of her.
Erin launched the icicle at Yukina, causing it to fly through the air like one of Layla's arrows.
Seeing the ice spear coming towards her, Yukina reorientated her right arm so the tessen fan was vertical instead of horizontal.
Using dextrous movements, she fully opened the tessen fan, the leaves of the fan forming a whole circle, with the two pieces of the guards clipped together, forming a "handle" of sorts.
Yukina swung her arm downwards, launching it through the air like a flying sawblade.
The others all watched in wide-eyed disbelief, as the tessen fan cut right through the icicle like a buzzsaw, cleaving it in half vertically.
As the icicle split into two pieces and continued flying with its momentum, the laws of physics forced the two pieces to drift further and further apart.
By the time they reached Yukina, the two pieces flew safely overhead, each piece soaring past either of her shoulders, leaving her unharmed.
However, at the same time, Yukina's tessen fan hadn't simply stopped when it had sliced through Erin's ice projectile.
On the contrary, it kept going.
Erin grit her teeth as she saw the tessen fan coming at her like a flying sawblade.
Fighting against her own body, she forced her left arm up in front of her using awkward, rigid movements.
Fortunately, she managed to make it in time, and she used her Intermediate-Tier Knight Sword to parry the tessen fan.
A metallic "clang" was heard, and the tessen fan was sent flying off towards the right in an arc.
The eyes of those around the two widened, as they heard the metal "clang".
It was clear that whatever that tessen fan was made out of, it was not paper.
Even more strangely, the trajectory of the tessen fan seemed…quite peculiar.
Normally, when a thrown metallic object clashed with another, it would be sent off-course, rebounding in a completely different direction.
Yet the curved arc that Yukina's tessen fan hand rebound in seemed much too choreographed for that, and as they watched it fly back in the air, it seemed to be flying in a perfect circle back to Yukina, flying like a boomerang.
Yukina raised her right arm up in the air, and grabbed it by its "handle" when the tessen fan made its return trip.
A short distance away from Yukina, Erin took a deep breath.
Fortunately for her, it seemed that Yukina couldn't move while her "Skill" was active, as the howling wind and driving snow had come to an abrupt, sudden stop the second she had thrown her fan to cut through Erin's ice projectile.
While that meant that Erin no longer had to worry about any more permafrost appearing on her body, it did mean that she had to wait for the permafrost already on her to melt before she regained her full range of movement.
'Well, this is certainly an…unadvantageous position,' Erin thought, as she felt her skin and her uniform beginning to become covered in a small layer of water, as the permafrost melted. 'I'm up against someone who uses ranged weapons, as well as possesses a Skill that makes it difficult for me to close the distance. Maybe, I was a bit too…impatient. It might have been wise to wait for my MC to regenerate before challenging her.'
As she looked up ahead at Yukina, she saw Yukina's body begin to turn pure white, as it took on the consistency of a snow sculpture.
The next second, her body became what looked like to those around her to be a living, sentient, fast-moving squall of snow.
The snow squall flew across the assembly hall, making a bee-line for Erin.
Once it reached her, it slowly reformed into Yukina.
And, as Yukina reformed, she was standing mere feet away from Erin, the leaf of her tessen fan pressed against the girl's throat.
Erin could feel both the cold steel of the fan's leaf, as well as a slight, stinging pain as it cut a shallow slit into her skin.
Yukina looked at Erin with a malicious, spiteful smirk.
"Oh, please tell me that is not all you have, little girl," Yukina replied in a taunting voice. "After all, I thought you wanted to see 'what I was capable of'."
Her smile widened.
"It'd be a shame for all of us if I were to be some 'weak, delicate flower', don't you think?" she asked, throwing Erin's own words back at her.
Seeing the interaction, Sergeant Faye's face fell.
'Great,' she thought. 'Cause one Shizuka wasn't bad enough.'
Erin stared up at Yukina, completely still, as the girl quite literally had a blade to her throat.
It seemed she had…underestimated how strong this "Beast" of Tsukuru's would be.
Slowly, she glanced over at Tsukuru.
"Hikiko," she replied.
Tsukuru glanced over at her, an eyebrow raised.
"Let's…get a rain check for this fight," she replied. "We'll…finish this at a later time once I'm back at full fighting condition. Let's call this a draw for now."
Tsukuru let out an amused snort.
Erin hadn't managed to land a single attack the entire fight, and yet here she was, acting as if the match had been "close".
'This whole fight was your idea, and now, once you're on the losing end, you want to back out?' he thought, fighting the urge to roll his eyes at her.
It was clear to him that Erin had simply bitten off more than she could chew.
He let out a sigh.
"Yukina," he replied.
Yukina continued looking down at Erin for a minute longer, a smirk on her face, before she eventually drew her hand away from Erin's throat, taking the metal tessen fan with it.
The second the metal leaf of the tessen fan was no longer digging into her throat, Erin let out a deep breath.
***
Far away from the Assembly Hall, General Nathan was busy at the desk in his office, once again, swamped with paperwork.
It was then that there was a sudden knock on his door.
General Nathan let out an exhausted sigh, and put down his pen.
"Come in," he replied, pinching the bridge of his nose.
The door to his office opened, revealing a nervous-looking boy, which the General found very confusing, judging from the number "4" that he could see on the boy's wristwatch.
In his hands, he was clutching what looked like to be a black, metal gulf ball.
"Uh…" the boy said in a nervous tone, his eyes darting back and forth. "I was told to…take this to the higher-ups for a…reimbursement?"