Salomeh squinted, her pupils narrowing like those of a predator recognizing an ancient trace.
"Her combat movements… vaguely remind me of Sakolomeh's…"
Bakuran slowly turned his face toward the little girl, as if his senses had just realigned.
"You think she could be connected to him?"
Salomeh didn't answer immediately.
She stood up, her coat rippling behind her, and her voice rang abruptly throughout the hall:
"May I test my skills with you?"
The audience turned as one.
The young girl on the ring barely lifted her chin, but her blue eyes fixed on Salomeh with a new gleam: an animal recognition, or perhaps an instinct of self-preservation.
Salomeh continued:
"Clearly, you didn't even enjoy these fights.
So I'd like to try to give you one."
She walked through the crowd without stopping. Humans stepped aside as if pushed back by an invisible pressure, a mix of presence, confidence, and something that did not belong to this reality.
The referee, completely lost, raised his arms.
"Well… go ahead, you can fight!"
He literally didn't have time to finish his sentence.
The little girl had already leapt.
An invisible strike sliced through the air like a sonic serpent.
Salomeh felt the wave even before it truly existed—and shifted a millimeter.
The attack passed beside her, tearing a line of dust on the ground.
She smiled inwardly.
An attack that can be spread with air vibrations and shock waves…
It vaguely reminds me of Sakolomeh's sneaky killer punch.
Hinata landed, surprised that her first strike had missed, but she didn't waste a second. She got back into guard, legs bent, breathing grounded, and surged again toward Salomeh.
What followed was a dance.
The girl's blows were lightning-fast, precise, almost supernatural for a mere human.
Salomeh slid, pivoted, dodged, parried each strike with calm grace, almost mocking.
The audience had stopped whispering.
Not a sound.
Only the air shredded by invisible impacts and diffuse shocks could be heard.
Meanwhile, nearby, a vendor—paralyzed by the duel—still held her basket of chips, unable to look away.
Bakuran, perfectly indifferent, turned his head toward her.
"Could I have some chips?"
The vendor blinked, then after a pause, handed him a packet without even asking for money.
"Thanks."
He opened it as if this mythical fight were just background noise.
On the ring, Hinata doubled her efforts.
Her fists blurred, her feet brushed the ground with the lightness of a shadow. Every movement aimed at a vulnerable point, a precise impact zone. She put her whole soul into each strike.
But Salomeh...
… only countered.
Never retaliated.
Never struggled.
She simply read, observed, learned that moving body before her. Sometimes she even tilted her head, amused by an unexpected tactical variation.
Hinata eventually leapt backward.
She slid two meters, her heels tracing a line in the dust.
Her breathing was rapid.
Her sweat beaded, her hair slightly stuck to her skin.
"Who… who are you?"
Her voice trembled, not with fear, but with raw incomprehension.
She had just realized she was facing something that, technically, surpassed her.
Salomeh said nothing.
She walked slowly, calmly, as if nothing mattered but what she was really looking for.
She stopped a few steps away.
"Do you know where Sakolomeh is?"
Hinata's eyes widened.
"Who?"
She didn't even seem to recognize the name.
No reaction, no unconscious twitch, no hesitation betraying hidden memory.
And that immediately surprised Salomeh.
She stood still, her eyes fixed on the little girl.
One second passed.
Two.
Three.
Then she thought:
"… You are not bound by memory.
So why do your movements bear his trace?"
The crowd, oblivious to the tension saturating the air, remained silent, hypnotized.
Niyus⁵ watched, perplexed.
Bakuran ate his chips, impassive.
Hinata resumed, panting:
"I… I don't know that name.
I've never heard of him.
Why… why do my movements remind you of someone?
I never had a master."
That last phrase made the air vibrate around them.
Never had a master.
No teaching passed down.
Then where did these impossible techniques come from?
Salomeh breathed very slowly.
Reality around her seemed to tremble for the beat of a heart.
Because she had just understood something.
Not everything yet.
Not clearly.
But enough to feel that this girl's existence was no coincidence.
Not at all.
Suddenly, the little girl took a deep breath.
A breath.
A shiver.
Then her whole body began to emit an emerald green light.
A dense mana, pulsing, almost toxic as it seemed to come from a system that was not human.
The crowd gasped.
Hinata raised her head, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
"Anyway… I don't know what you're talking about, nor who you are…
But what I do know is that if I lose to you…
Melokosa won't have surprises thanks to the money I might earn today."
The word dropped in the air like an anvil.
Melokosa.
Salomeh's eyes widened.
A shiver ran down her spine.
"… Melokosa?"
Hinata gave her no time to breathe.
She rushed forward.
This time, the brutality was real.
The strikes cracked, compressing the air, deforming the space around them.
Each movement left green trails dissipating in the air like sparks of poison.
But Salomeh…
… avoided everything.
With the same ease.
As if the green light didn't even exist.
Yet this light possessed a terrifying property.
A technique no one should have been able to invent, let alone a simple girl.
Because Hinata's energy induced a constraint in the opponent's body.
An organic charm, a kind of muscular programming:
each strike became a mandatory trajectory,
each attack forced the enemy's body to open a zone,
dodges became impossible,
counterattacks useless.
A form of energetic physical compulsion.
A martial power, embodied.
For any human…
For any expert…
… it would be instant defeat.
But Salomeh ruined the very logic of the power.
She slipped out of intention.
Her movements no longer had any physical coherence with Hinata's attack.
It was as if she stood outside the charm, at an angle the energy could not reach.
Hinata, meanwhile, understood nothing anymore.
She jumped backward, then again—a backflip, a twist, two bounces on the ground like an acrobat.
Her breath stabilized.
Her gaze became cold, calculating.
Then she completely changed style.
She became fluid, undulating, unpredictable.
Her shoulders moved like illusions.
Her hips shifted with impossible timing.
Even her breathing became a feint—a breath that resembled an attack, a breath-hold betraying a diversion.
Every step was a threat.
Every micro-movement, a trap.
In the audience, martial arts masters who had seen her began to pale.
Hinata approached again.
Her green light pulsed like an extra-dimensional heart.
Salomeh instinctively raised her hand to parry.
Hinata dodged.
With inhuman grace.
She slid along Salomeh's arm, pivoting as if her bones had no rigidity, as if her body rewrote natural trajectories to counter any attempt at control.
Her greenish energy gave the impression that reality bent around her.
Salomeh smiled.
She made a soft leap backward, effortlessly, as if her body had decided to float for a moment.
"This little one is incredible at close combat…
If I had met her when I was younger, I would have liked to face her.
Too bad now…"
She watched the fists shining like living emeralds.
The power that rose each second by one notch.
That raw, blind, almost tragic determination.
"… I'm afraid to hit her even once, for fear of killing her accidentally."
Hinata landed again, panting, but her eyes…
Her eyes did not give up.
Something inside her refused to accept defeat.
Something older, heavier than her body.
And that something had spoken a word.
Melokosa.
Salomeh was not going to hit her.
She was going to question her.
But first…
She had to understand what she was.