The reddish-black void of the Masked Man's dimension seemed to vibrate with the sheer density of the mana being thrown around. I could feel the God of Spirits hovering behind me, a silent, majestic sentinel that was the only thing keeping me in one piece. I was breathing hard, my chest heaving as the metallic scent of this realm filled my lungs. I had already drawn blood twice, landing strikes that should have ended any ordinary warrior, yet Tokine stood there across the invisible floor, her expression shifting from surprise to a terrifying amusement.
Tokine suddenly laughs and she healed.
I watched in silent frustration as the deep gashes I had carved into her shoulders began to close, the flesh knitting itself back together in a reverse-flicker of reality. It wasn't a standard healing spell; there was no green light, no stitching of skin. It was as if the injury had simply never happened. She says that she used time magic to reverse the damage that I did to her.
The sheer unfairness of it would have broken a lesser fighter. How do you kill someone who can simply rewind their own state of being? But I'm not phased. My heart was a steady drum in my chest. I had died and come back too many times in the last hour to let a little temporal reversal rattle my focus. I gripped the hilt of my black katana and the cursed dagger tighter, my eyes locked on her form.
I tried throwing my katana and dagger before she disappeared and use the same strategy.
The weapons spun through the air, whistling as they cut through the crimson mist. I calculated the trajectories, preparing to blink to whichever point would give me the best angle for a killing blow. But Tokine was a genius of combat, and she had already adapted to my rhythm. When I chose to teleport to the dagger she's far away. She had anticipated the jump, moving her body out of the range of my reappearance before I had even materialized.
The air rippled beside me. She reappeared and tried to slice me. The edge of her scythe whistled toward my neck, a crescent of dark energy that threatened to end the duel then and there. My instincts screamed. But I dodged and stabbed her with my dagger. I felt the resistance of her strong body and then the familiar slide of the blade into flesh. It was a shallow hit, but a hit nonetheless.
She didn't even flinch. She laughed and healed herself. The blood on her tunic vanished, and the wound disappeared as if I had stabbed a ghost. Her eyes, however, were no longer playful. They were cold, gleaming with a dark, focused intent that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. And she said that she'll get serious now.
The world didn't just move faster; it ceased to exist for a moment. Suddenly she disappeared and sliced my head off and crushed it.
The sensation was beyond words. There was a flash of cold steel, a sudden disconnect from my body, and then the sound of a sickening crunch as her heel or her scythe—I couldn't even tell which—met the fragments of my skull. For a second, there was only darkness. No thought, no pain, just the absolute void of non-existence. But the Crowned Spirit behind me was not finished. It reached out, its ethereal hands grasping at the fragments of my soul.
I got regenerated by my spirits RSA.
The white and black light erupted, pulling my physical form back from the brink of total destruction. I gasped, my lungs burning as they reformed, my hands clutching at the invisible floor to keep myself from falling into the abyss. I stood up, my head ringing, my vision blurry. At this point we're just tied and can't win. If she could reverse time to heal herself and I could use my RSA to come back from death, we were locked in a stalemate that would only end when one of our spirits finally shattered under the strain.
I felt the God of Spirits shift behind me. Its presence grew warmer, more intrusive, as if it were trying to merge its perception with mine. Suddenly the god of spirits covered my eyes and tooked of the hands and I can see better far better.
When the spirit's hands moved away from my face, the reddish-black dimension looked entirely different. The colors were more vivid, and the air was filled with glowing threads of temporal energy—trails of where things had been and where they were going. It was like seeing the blueprint of reality.
Tokine disappeared but I can see her.
She was moving through a layer of time that should have been invisible to me. She stopped time but I can see her move. To everyone else, including the Masked Man on his throne, I would have looked like a statue. But through the spirit's eyes, I saw Tokine walking toward me with her scythe raised, her movements slow and deliberate in the frozen world. She looked so confident, so sure that I was a sitting duck.
I pretended to be still till she came close.
I kept my breathing shallow, my muscles loose, mimicking the state of a frozen object. I waited until the edge of her scythe was inches from my throat, until I could see the smirk on her face. Then, I moved. I slashed her with my katana.
The blade moved through the frozen air like a hot knife through butter. The impact was jarring because it shouldn't have been possible. She became extremely surprised and panicked and asked how?!!!
The time-stop shattered. Reality snapped back into its proper flow as she stumbled back, a deep, bleeding gash across her chest that she hadn't had time to reverse. I didn't give her a second to breathe. I dashed forward and sliced her hand and I kicked her hand that held her scythe.
The scythe clattered away, spinning into the dark mist. I stood over her, my katana at her throat, the white and black light of my spirits casting long, jagged shadows against the red sky. The question that had been burning in my mind since the 50th floor finally tore itself from my throat.
I asked her on why would she do this, why would she betrayed us I thought that we're friends.
I remembered the adventure, the laughs, How could she stand there and watch our classmates fall? How could she seal Sir Vael? I wanted an answer. I wanted her to tell me it was a trick, a double agent mission, anything.
She just said nothing.
Her silence was the loudest thing in the dimension. It was a cold, hard confirmation of her betrayal. And she regenerated her hand and kicked me and she got her scythe. The blow to my chest sent me sliding back, but I flipped in mid-air and landed on my feet. Time went back to normal and we started trading slashes.
The sound of our weapons clashing was like continuous thunder. Clang. Spark. Clang. But the duel was no longer the same. With the God of Spirits' eyes, the world was moving in slow motion. I can see her attacks 5 seconds early and I dodged her attacks.
Every swing of her scythe, every attempt to flicker through time, I saw it before it even formed in her mind. I moved with a fluid, effortless grace, stepping through the gaps in her offense as if I were dancing. She was swinging with everything she had, her movements becoming more frantic as she realized her greatest advantage had been neutralized.
She realizes that her time magic can't work on me now.
She skidded back, her scythe held low, her breathing finally becoming visible as steam in the cold air. And she just laughed and said to me that I have the most potential she has ever seen. She stood there, her eyes wide with a manic kind of pride. "Dual spirits RSA has the rare cursed weapon dagger and katana while having insane skills," she said, her voice echoing through the reddish-black void.
I ignored her blabbing. I didn't care about her praise or her assessment of my potential. She was the enemy, and she was standing between me and my friends. I dashed forward and grabbed her head and threw her.
I didn't use a blade; I used raw, physical force. I caught her by the hair and the side of her face, swinging her body with the momentum of my dash and hurling her across the dimension. She tumbled through the air, her body disappearing into the mist before she righted herself and landed with a graceful slide.
She laughed and said that she likes people who have potential.
I stood my ground, my katana and dagger crossed in front of me, the light of my RSA glowing brighter than ever. I said that I don't care.
Her smirk returned, wider and sharper than before. She crouched low, her scythe glowing with a violent, pulsating violet light that seemed to resonate with the Masked Man's throne. She smirked and dashed forward and attacked me with a barrage of attacks.
The void was filled with the sound of a thousand strikes happening at once. She was a whirlwind of steel and shadow, her speed reaching levels that even my foresight struggled to track. And she said, SHOW ME YOUR POTENTIAL!!!
I met her head-on. The reddish-black universe around us began to crack under the pressure of our clashing mana. Each parry I made sent shockwaves through the dimension, the gold and white light of my spirits battling the purple darkness of her scythe. I could see the 5-second window, but she was attacking so fast that the windows were overlapping. I was moving my blades in a blur, my mind focused on a single point of survival.