"Come and fight!" shouted Logan, his voice resonating across the warped battlefield.
Opposite him, Aria had completely transformed. Her teeth had lengthened, now sharp like a predator's fangs. Her white fur, much denser now, bristled from the force of her transformation. Her eyes gleamed with a wild, purely bestial light.
For the first time, she was truly tasting the power of this ability she had never fully unleashed before.
All her senses were now at their peak. Every vibration in the ground, every shift in the air, every movement Logan made reached her with almost supernatural clarity.
A newfound thrill welled up inside her, merging with this overflowing strength.
With a single exchange of glances with Logan, the fight erupted.
Aria shot forward at a blinding speed, sword in hand, her figure disappearing in a blur.
This time, she wasn't merely dodging the spikes erupting from the ground she was cutting them clean through mid-sprint, reducing the stone points to mere debris beneath her feet.
Logan, instantly analyzing this surge in power, reacted at once. The pace of the spikes suddenly tripled, stone projectiles firing in volleys from every angle, transforming the battlefield into a true execution ground. But Aria didn't slow downin fact, she accelerated.
She spun her sword in a spiral, now wrapped in a coil of highly compressed water, slicing through every attack in her path. At the same time, her free hand unleashed a relentless barrage of water bullets toward Logan, forcing him to juggle between defense and evasion.
The ground fractured under the intensity of their crossed assaults. What was once a stable training field had become a shifting ruin. Repeated shockwaves sent clouds of dust and shards of rock flying, turning the scenery into a visual hell.
Yet in the heart of this chaos, Aria kept advancing, her feral instinct merging seamlessly with her rigorous training.
She was no longer the same fighter she had been at the start of their training. Every strike now carried an explosive blend of technique, savagery, and raw power.
Every obstacle in Aria's path now shattered. Spikes, debris, improvised walls nothing could slow her furious advance.
Seeing the imminent danger, Logan decided to raise his defenses. With a deep rumble, a massive stone wall surged from the ground, far thicker and sturdier than the previous ones, standing as a massive barrier between them.
But he didn't stop there. As Aria closed in, Logan triggered a barrage of spikes erupting behind her, trying to outpace her and force her to halt her assault.
However, Logan had made a miscalculation.
The Will to Grow ability Aria possessed didn't just accelerate her leveling; it drastically boosted her capacity to adapt and learn in real combat. Every second of this duel offered her instant lessons.
Suddenly, there was a clear shift.
Aria spun her body in a full circle with animal-like fluidity, gripping her sword firmly with both hands. A powerful current spiraled around her blade, forming a true vortex of rapidly rotating water.
The whirlpool devoured the spikes instantly, grinding them into fragments, before slamming into the massive stone wall. The wall, despite its size, was cleaved clean in a single fluid motion, as if sliced by an invisible saw.
Shards of rock flew in all directions, revealing Logan's silhouette behind the collapsing barrier.
Caught off guard, Logan only had time to lift his eyes to meet Aria's blazing gaze—she was already nearly upon him.
"Got you!" she cried, her eyes shining with wild determination, locked onto his.
Their gazes crossed in a suspended instant. The tension in the air was palpable. The real duel began now.
Aria's sword swung once more. But as before, it met Logan's hand, which stopped the blade before it could reach him.
This time, however, Aria wasted no time—there was no surprise, no hesitation. Quite the opposite.
She immediately followed up with a rain of frenzied strikes, slashing faster and harder with each blow. Her movements turned into a whirlwind of water and steel, her blade slicing through the air at a staggering speed. Every parried strike only opened the way for the next.
Logan, despite his exceptional reflexes, was forced to repel the assaults at an increasingly frantic pace, his hand deflecting the blade non-stop, centimeter by centimeter.
"Faster! Fasterrr! Harder! Harderrrr!" Aria roared inwardly, exhilarated by this new power surging inside her.
Her primal scream rang through the clearing:
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
The furious exchange lasted several long minutes. And little by little, despite all his skill, Logan couldn't ignore the first marks left by Aria's ferocity. Fine cuts appeared on his arms, his face. Nothing serious, but enough to prove she was breaking through to a new threshold.
Then suddenly, the critical limit was reached:
After such relentless effort, Aria's breathing finally grew short. She felt her mana reserves collapse abruptly. Her strength drained all at once—she had poured everything into this infernal assault.
But in that fraction of a second, she felt it deep within her: victory was close. Her sword, carried by her momentum, was about to strike Logan. The decisive blow seemed inevitable.
It was at that precise moment that Logan, his voice firm yet calm, declared:
"Well done, but this is where it ends."
The next instant was a visual detonation Logan vanished from her sight.
Aria, still mid-assault, felt her blade cut through empty air. Before she could react, a violent blow struck her abdomen. The force of the impact hurled her several meters away, rolling across the ground before she came to a heavy stop.
She rose with difficulty, breath ragged, muscles trembling. But as soon as she got to her feet, new spikes erupted from the ground. With a swift, precise motion, she annihilated the attack, her body guided by a mix of rage, instinct, and exhaustion.
Then her gaze locked with Logan's and time seemed to slow.
Before her eyes, she could see every detail, every muscle fiber beneath Logan's skin. The curve of his body, already in the midst of his attacking motion. The air vibrated around him, each particle of dust floating slowly as though suspended in an invisible liquid.
As her own heartbeat pounded in her ears slow, deep, like the beat of a funeral drum her instincts screamed. Every sense, sharpened by her Bestial Fury, amplified that feeling. This was death approaching. And yet, despite her enhanced body and heightened perception, she couldn't move.
Logan's arm finished its motion, and a violent rush of air carved several neat holes through Aria's hair. A thin cut appeared on her cheek. Behind her came a deafening crack, as if the very air had been shredded.
Her legs buckled under her. Her knees hit the ground hard while her breath trembled, eyes wide with the dawning realization that she had just brushed against death itself.
The fight had ended with Logan's victory.
Panting, on her knees, Aria slowly turned her head toward the thunderous noise behind her. What she saw made her freeze.
The trees for several meters behind her had literally exploded from the impact of the projectiles entire trunks torn apart, branches scattered in a storm of debris as if a destructive tempest had swept through.
She swallowed hard.
"If those had hit me…"
The image of her body riddled with holes, crushed under that colossal power, flashed through her mind. Her breath grew shorter at the thought, realizing how close she'd come to dying.
At that moment, Logan calmly stepped forward and offered her his hand. Firm, steady, yet gentle.
Without hesitation, Aria took it and let him pull her up.
Logan retrieved a healing potion from his bag and gently applied it to the cut on her cheek, then to the other injuries she'd sustained during their fight. The potion tingled as it worked, closing the wounds and slowly bringing her body back to normal.
Once she was standing, breath caught and emotions steadied, Aria burst out:
"You could maybe explain your abilities to me now!"
Her voice was frustrated, annoyed, and clearly curious all at once.
Logan gave a faint smile.
"I control vectors."
Aria raised an eyebrow, completely lost.
"You control… what? What does that even mean?"
"I'll try to explain it simply," Logan began calmly, choosing his words.
"In this world, countless forces are always at play. Take movement for example: when you run, you create motion, a force. That motion can be represented as a vector—something with a direction and an intensity."
He paused briefly to see if Aria was following.
"I can manipulate those vectors. Slow them, reverse them, amplify them. Do you see what I mean?"
Aria stared at him, a mix of focus and confusion. Her ears perked up slightly, showing she was trying to grasp the idea, but her eyes betrayed that it felt foreign. In this world, where physics wasn't taught that way, the concept was almost alien.
Logan smiled lightly, sensing her struggle.
"I'll show you. It's easier that way."
He stepped back and motioned with his hand.
"Hit me with your fist."
Aria arched a brow, hesitated for a moment, then obeyed. Her fist shot through the air straight toward Logan's face. Yet just a few centimeters from her target, her fist stopped dead, as if it had slammed into an invisible wall. Then, suddenly, her arm was shoved backward, throwing off her balance.
"When you attacked, you generated motion a force. I can stop that force or redirect it," Logan explained calmly.
Aria's eyes widened, her mouth hanging open.
"So that's why my attacks didn't even touch you earlier! They didn't do anything! But that's… that's totally busted!" she blurted, half frustrated, half amazed.
Logan let out a small laugh.
"It's not foolproof. I have limits. It all depends on two things: the strength of the attack and my Calculation stat. If the force is too great for my processing capacity, I can only partially stop it or not at all."
He paused briefly, his tone turning more serious.
"For example, if your last attack earlier had actually hit my arm, I probably would have lost it."
A shiver ran down Aria's spine as she realized just how tense the fight had been, and how much she'd really improved.
"And how do you launch projectiles that destructive?" she asked quickly, curiosity now fully awake.
"And also… how do you suddenly move so fast?"
"There are many forces at play: motion, weight, air resistance, gravity…" Logan's tone was calm, almost professorial.
"For now, I focus on one: the force of motion. I manipulate and amplify that as much as I can."
He bent down, picked up a simple stone, and let it float above his palm.
"When I amplify the motion vector of this stone, its speed increases exponentially. It becomes a true weapon, capable of piercing even steel."
With a flick of his wrist, the stone vanished at blinding speed, smashing violently into a tree far off; the trunk splintered under the impact.
"I apply the same principle to my own body. By increasing my movement vector, I become faster."
As he finished speaking, he suddenly vanished from Aria's sight, moving so fast he seemed to have disappeared.
A fraction of a second later, she felt a friendly tap on her shoulder. Spinning around, she found Logan standing behind her with a faint smile.
Aria froze, stunned.
"And what about the other forces? Like weight, air resistance, gravity?" she pressed after a brief silence, her curiosity growing.
Logan took a light breath, crossing his arms.
"Right now, I don't control those other vectors yet. Many are still beyond my reach. There's friction, electricity, magnetism, temperature, pressure, waves, raw energy, the state of matter…"
He lifted his eyes to the sky, his gaze almost dreamy.
"And beyond that, there are far deeper concepts things any human would dream of controlling one day: time, space, and matter itself."
A shiver ran through Aria at his words. The possibilities seemed endless, almost impossible to fully grasp.
But one burning question now sat on her lips:
"And what happens when you finally master all of them?"
Logan answered without hesitation, his gaze returning to his hands calm, lucid, and absolute:
"Then I'll probably be the strongest man in this world."
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