By the time she was able to reposition, her hands were already clapped together, similar to how they were before. The movement was clean and automatic, as if it had been done many times before to the point of muscle memory.
"Terra: Earthfang Volley!"
The ring became disturbed again.
"Seriously?! How has this place not run out of stone for you to throw at me?" I barked, half to myself and half to the universe.
"I don't know, Ryn, but try not to get knocked out too quickly. I'm having way too much fun!" Ilya said with a somewhat concerning smile on her face.
Stone fangs tore after me in another chained rush, each one hurling itself out of the floor with enough force to break the air around it. I moved constantly now, jumping, sidestepping, cutting some apart, letting others miss by what felt like deeply personal margins.
The sparring ring had become a series of violent choices.
'I either move now, or get skewered.'
Off to the side, I noticed Junio and Randel having a conversation, presumably about this fight. I was just about able to hear what they were saying.
"You sure this is alright?" Junio asked.
Randel calmly answered, "Hm? What do you mean?"
Junio's gaze stayed on the sparring ring.
"I mean," he said, "Ilya's pretty strong."
Randel crossed his arms. "Ilya certainly is strong, but don't worry," Randel said. "Ryn's pretty strong himself."
I vaulted over some half-broken stone and blasted another stone fang midair using Cutting Draft.
"He's probably stronger than Ilya, if I'm being honest."
That made Junio sound genuinely surprised for the first time.
"Oh? Really?"
"Yeah."
A stone fang suddenly appeared in front of my face, causing me to reactively slash at it with Cutting Draft and landing hard on one knee.
"He's even stronger than Ilya? That's... interesting."
Randel hesitated.
Then, he muttered, it was so quiet that I probably wasn't supposed to hear it.
"It is... and he's not even using his full strength."
There's a moment of silence.
Then, in the midst of all the dodging, I could hear Randel say, quieter this time, "But then again, neither is Ilya."
'Oh, good. How bloody wonderful.'
"Not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear while dodging flying stone teeth from said person," I mumbled sarcastically.
"Huh? What was that, Ryn? I couldn't hear you!" Ilya shouted while relentlessly hurling stone fangs at me.
Ilya's next set of stone volleys came a bit slower than the others.
Or maybe I had finally adjusted to the pace of them.
The chain of sharp stone tore at me from a diagonal angle this time, forcing me to reroute the course I had been moving along and cut across the ring toward her instead,
This led me to create the first real opening I had.
It wasn't because Ilya made a mistake.
No.
It was because I was finally able to read the rhythm of her spell.
The attack pattern of Earthfang Volley wasn't random. I could tell Ilya's intent was to put pressure on with its sequence of attacks. Once I stopped reacting to each individual spear and started moving against the whole chain, the spell became significantly easier to navigate through.
I ducked under the first fang. Kicked off the side of the second, allowing me to jump over and dodge the third, letting it burst into fragments of stone behind.
I continued my advance.
Ilya saw it.
I could tell from the way her eyes widened slightly, even as she slammed both palms down again. Another line of stone shot toward me.
'Too late.'
I cut through one with a Cutting Draft, slipped between two more as they approached me, and crossed into her space before the next volley could fully form.
I was now in close range.
My range.
I drove one palm forward.
"Ventus: Turbulent Break!"
The burst landed clean.
A concussive mass of violent wind exploded from my strike and caught her square in the chest before she could fully shift her footing. Ilya's whole body snapped backwards with the impact, her heels leaving the stone as she was driven across the ring and down onto her back in a rough skid.
The hall went still for half a second.
Then I straightened, let the pressure in my chest settle, and said with what I considered admirable restraint:
"So, how's that? Still having fun?"
Ilya stared up at the ceiling for exactly one heartbeat.
Then sat halfway up, one hand helping her up while the other was curled up into a fist.
"You cheeky little—"
She cut herself off and exhaled.
"No, that's fair," she exhaled. "I guess I deserved that."
I grinned despite myself.
"I'm glad we agree."
Finally, she stood.
And then the entire atmosphere changed.
The change was immediate enough that my grin faded before I consciously allowed it to.
Until now, she had felt bright and cheery. Fast and aggressive in an almost playful way.
But now...
Now she felt focused.
There was a grim feel to her surroundings.
She rolled her shoulders once and drew a slow breath.
Then her stance changed.
'Huh, what is she doing?'
I had no clue what she was doing, but I could tell it was deliberate. She had one foot angled, her body turned, her hand closed into a fist, now reverberant, the other aligned in a clean, driving line. Something about it gave me the impression that this wasn't any normal spellcasting.
'That's not how she was spellcasting before.'
And then she shouted.
"Majin Fist: First Form!"
A gust of wind discharged from where she stood.
I put my arms out in response, trying to block the gust of wind. "Aghh, what the hell is this? This isn't Ventus magic."
It was like a force tearing loose around her body.
The colour oozing from her was what shocked me more than anything.
Magenta.
Thin pulses of magenta that flared to life over her skin, wrapping around her from head to shoulder to ankle in a bright outline. It was intense enough that the air around her seemed to recoil from it.
It was bright, unnatural and violent.
The pressure coming off her felt real enough to make my skin crawl.
The floor under her feet cracked in thin lines.
Dust around her lifted.
My jaw dropped in utter disbelief.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"
Ilya didn't answer.
Instead, she launched herself at me.
No. It would be more accurate to say shot at me.
Her acceleration wasn't human; it wasn't the movement of the average mage. One second, she was standing a considerable distance away from me in a strange stance with some magenta hue hugging her body, and the next, she was in front of me, attacking me from the air, causing the space between us to rupture by pure physical force.
And then...
She finished her spell— or, whatever it was.
"Palm of Serenity!"
A crushing pressure came first.
The air tightened all at once, making the whole ring feel drastically smaller, heavier, as if something enormous had decided to lean down and look at me specifically. The ground trembled. Dust froze at the edge of her motion. My body registered danger before my eyes understood it.
Then I saw it.
A colossal magenta spectral palm bloomed behind her strike.
Half-transparent.
But definitively immense.
It wasn't actual living flesh, not exactly; it was something denser, stranger, shaped from force and ominous pressure rather than a body. It appeared over and behind her attacking arm like judgment taking form, perfectly still for one impossible heartbeat as if the world itself had paused to witness what was about to happen.
Then it slammed forward.
Not wildly.
Not angrily.
But calmly.
With absolute certainty.
Overwhelmingly.
Like serenity.
Every instinct in me screamed.
There was no way for me to dodge that attack at this distance. No time to think my way around it. No movement that didn't end with me being squished halfway through the sparring floor.
So I did the only thing available.
I threw up both hands and roared:
"Ventus: Turbulent Explosion!"
A raging compressed burst of wind exploded outward from my palms in a desperate wall of pressure.