In the next moment, the spear shattered.
It had survived the void enhancement for a while – but now the Knight's surprise attack had failed.
'I can't believe she had enough time to divert it towards her shoulder and avoiding her heart from taking the whole burden…' the Knight then looked at her left arm, 'what is she doing…'
She then sopped the Knight still – even with the armament active.
"I guess that's a No? You won't be helping; I figured as much…"
The Knight had its own reasons for refusing, but in terms of protocol, abandoning one's duty, was still enough grounds to file someone under dark knight. Unfortunately, though, this meant the Knight was not facing one of those cowards.
"I have been out here for ages – I hate to break this to you – Not only have I faced destroyers far stronger than you, but that file of yours is a little out of date. Let me guess, they probably labelled me as incredibly dangerous, right? Well, if I had to give myself a label, I think I'd say perilous – wouldn't you?"
Her voice was being muffled by her helmets echo, it sounded a bit amused, but something was serious in her tone. Then the solid void crumbled into liquid, flowing back into the Knight – it needed it.
"That won't help…"
Then she punched the Knight, and for the first time ever, the Knight's armour cracked on its original cracks. These were the constant decay like markings, and she just pried them open, marring the surface of the Knight.
The Knight then finally broke free – unlike last time – it already had a plan to deal with this inability to move. The Knight used the void and moved it through the sand, and right now it was covering her entire sabbatons locking her to the ground and also liberating itself after it used [Chain Breaker].
The Knight then kicked her, right into a strong wall of a hundred-metre-thick solid air and glass, all pressurised into a stronger, denser barrier.
She slammed right through it. Quu got up, clearing the fog in her mind. The Knight was already upon her. A crushing blow was delivered onto the sand, sending solidified glass flying everywhere.
Quu dodged it, but something stabbed deep into her back. The Knight had left the blade [Unmoving] there permanently. She reached into her back, pulling it out, and forcing it to move – just like how Adriel had been capable of.
The Knight did not even let her rest – she raised her head, arching it onto her back to avoid the obvious attempt at decapitation. The Knights hand whisked across her breastplate, missing her neck completely.
From here on – their battle entered what one would compare to hyperdrive. Jolts of incredible blows cleared the entire area – but even as they moved at these speeds the Knight was not ready for her.
She powered through, avoiding the Knight's advances to cover her in the void. Their battle took pause every time one bound the other, by using their hearts or simple truths of the world, and the other found a way to unbind themselves. The Knight had the [Chain Breaker] skill, and even then, she was more adapt at breaking constraints that it was.
It had to invent strange desires on the spot, to replace those she dealt with – the one thing she could not remove was the ever-constant terror. It was one that no being could ignore, but its constant use, especially on her was taking its toll on the Knight.
But the battle had to shift, right when the Knight had decided to settle on strategy number five thousand and sixteenth, strategy number forty thousand and seven had just lost the ability to keep up with her manoeuvres.
Unlike her, the Knight had high knowledge stats, and in live time it had gone through thousands of simulations. The inability to find a path forward was due to being constantly being hindered by her extraordinary control over any and all movement, the Knight had to dodge her attack five thousand times in a simulation, just to keep close enough from being taken out once in real time.
The hyperspace that had formed around them began to work around the Knight; she was using their after images to fight the Knight in a never-ending combination. The more movements they made, the more attacks she had – standing still was no help either.
So, all of this moving around and having the same movements being weaponised was going far beyond the strategies the Knight was concocting. The problem is that the Knight had to move to fight, and that movement became a tool for her, and she did the same to both their movements. In fact, this growth was exponential.
Even worse the faster the Knight moved, the deadlier her attacks. That was not even the main problem, the main problem laid in how quickly and easily she could use them. She could use movement streaks to enhance other movements. Right then, she just took the Knights dash and added it to her own dash, doubling her speed.
'There is no way her mind can keep up with every movement so efficiently, something tells me that the patterns on her skin are sharing the heavy loads...'
Once they hit hyperdrive, the movements she used became even deadlier. The Knight had to grin and bear through all of it, and even tried to grab the movement streaks, or distract her from using them. But then she would use this small lapse in judgement to clear more of the Knight's armour. And not to mention, even with an ethereal skill, the Knight could not touch the movements of hers.
Even if the Knight could not interact with the movements or see the after images after they were made, it had enough mental acuity to replay every action they did tenth fold and decrease the opacity of their previous actions and paste them on the live feed, enough for the Knight to track what movement she would use next.
The Knight would even move in specific directions to throw off her co-ordination. Sometimes it even managed to move in such control that grabbing its movement would cancel out some of the ones she had picked up and had ready to use.
She was keeping the Knight an inch away from a deadly slip up – but the Knight moved with such poise and peak control that she herself could not control all the movements as she usually could.
'Something is wrong here, this thing is countering the movements, but how? It'd have to be able to see them live, is it really using a cross reference, but during battle, how? No one should be able to keep up, maybe a researcher, but this is on another level – I can't say I've ever been beat when it came to who had more control over the movement, not even against destroyers.'
She could barely freeze the Knight for a second, as it would instantly break the bind. After constant repetition, the Knight knew exactly where her control was focused. She resorted to stopping the movement of the area around the Knight now- stopping the Knight was but a futile ploy, so she targeted the air that parted before it as it moved.
But at these speeds, they phased through the matter completely, so she had done something else to the air to pause the Knight for such instances. She then tried to throw a decisive blow, but the Knight had already broken loose of its constraints.
Their battle raged on for days – sending highly volitive waves onto Nhoils. Their battle shifting, had created this strong ball of crumpling space, kept firmly together by their respective powers. They barely collided, due to their impressive control, but when they got the edge over the other, even if just for a second, it sent a tidal wave of destruction and force rolling through the lands.
Surprisingly enough, everyone could tell it was knights fighting. Strangely enough, even though they were completely off on the context, they had all assumed it to be the fight between the darkness and the Knights. These were the usual associated waves of their unending war. Even at Elleria, the massive trees had muffled out the waves.
However, even if this is a battle between the darkness and a knight, Quu-Quu, they were on opposite sides. It was actually the battle between a dark knight and a Knight that should not be on their respective sides, but for the time being were.
The only strange thing about all these waves was that they lasted far longer than the night did. But no-one was a suicidal enough to follow these sounds and actually arrive upon their source. Even if they tried only a selective few would make it through. And the ones strong enough to, could not be bothered.
The Knight could not rely on its army, and the dragon. Even though she was no destroyer, but just like Vice and the others, it was sure, without a doubt, that she could kill Red, so it excluded it from the festivities. Kitrino, Cathina, and Forg, were not strong enough to affect this battle outside being a distraction – the Knight had thought about it, but it didn't have a strategy that could benefit on the meagre time they could buy, so they could live.
Quu's will was in tethers; the Knight had managed to scrape it from the times of weakness it had dragged out of her. It failed to rewrite her being enough for it to unwind on itself, turning her into nothingness. She guarded against such infringements on her being because she had the experience of dealing with such attacks from when she used to fight against the darkness.
But the Knight failed to see how she was not collapsing – her main will had been all but ravaged. She was somehow keeping her being together through her own doing. The Knight was not even sure if removing her will would undo her. Sure, the Knight was trying to take her soul and not kill her by accident, but it could not kill her either way.
'I knew Vice was holding back, but being a Banneret, I guess she really must have been suppressing a lot.'
Quu then pulled her will back together. Something she knew was possible but had never seen. She rewrote her code back in, pulling in her will, keeping it from crumpling, whilst restoring itself. She had fully come to work in unison with her will – a more connected existence. The Knight watched her will assemble itself.
'Incredible.' – thought the Knight.