The training grounds were made to facilitate a set of instincts, a set of skills, and a determination it takes to face the void.
First, it spun extremely fast, faster than it took the Knight to teleport, bordering on the speeds of light. The Knight kept teleporting, a dozen times a millisecond, just to keep its reference position in the sphere the same. Moving was just a bit trickier. The thing also managed to switch directions instantaneously without experiencing any acceleration. And one couldn't stay floating, because that made an even stronger force.
This place was dark and kept distorting the Knights senses – just like it did to others using [Sense Manipulation]. Since it had used a similar skill, the Knight was able to adjust to the lost senses. More mechanisms were put in place to achieve the inability to fight, and the Knight had just used the void as a coat around it to try and counter them using [Daunting].
There was no feasible way one could re-adjust to the everchanging place. This was still a pale imitation of the void, which is nothing. No senses exist, and for normal beings, this place gradually sends those in it into a spiral of deep unfathomable sense of existence. If one was not careful, their soul would never find its way out – even if the body is pulled out.
But this was merely making it harder to focus or even rely on the constant nature of the world. The Knight could see how this helped them but, it felt more like an inconvenience to ones of the void like it and its adversary – even if the adversary was better off.
The frustrating part though, had nothing to do with how this place made it impossible to fight, as it continuously changed randomly and adapted to counter for any developments you made. Even worse, if one wasn't instantaneously adapting to match the place, they would have been crushed.
The frustrating part was the Marshal, strolling with ease – as if they were on flat unmoving grounds. Her attacks hadn't waivered even once. This is when the Knight felt the sudden weight of her presence, and the solidifying air as it crashed into the Knight from the opposite direction, made worse by the fact that the force of her attack and the constant pressure from the training grounds amplified each other.
The fact she was not using her void to augment herself, is also why the Knight had only summoned its void but not used the void armament. So, the hit had stopped it still in its tracks. Which actually meant it had been sent flying so fast if it was moving at the same speed as the grounds but in the opposite direction.
The Knight started speeding up and teleporting around to regain a stronger hold on the battle. The hammer it had summoned could hit things from a distance – it had already watched most of its weapons and shields crumble. Actually, all its shields were gone now. And it was fighting with a hammer and spear.
This strange balance was good because the spear had an ability the Knight was just itching to try out. It had resolved not to use the armament on itself but, that just meant it could send all of it into the weapons, and even though they would crumble within a fraction of a millisecond, it was all it needed.
She looked at the Knight, then threw her baton, and used it as a stepping stone, to avoid contending against the pressure in here, as she was forced to bear it as well. But having crossed level 400, this was a simple inconvenience. She could move faster than the speed of light by temporarily exerting her presence beyond existence.
So, she did this and appeared before the Knight. She wound up, and at this instance, even though everything was moving as fast as Banneret Vice was – which was incredible fast – it saw the Marshal in slow motion. Every single armour piece, moving as if part of her body – which it probably was. Everything including the Knight came to a halt. And somehow the punch came – unperturbed. This is also why the Knight was hastily trying to use the void armament, but at her speeds, even instantaneous actions were in a stand still.
'I wonder if you'll survive a direct hit from he. I hope you do, because this is nothing near the soft baton hits, I've been throwing you till now – you better have prepared...'
Her fist made impact – and the Knight soul blew open, as pieces of it were sent scattered on the plane of her punch like blood splatter on a wall. The Knight had stabbed the spear into the ground beforehand. It shattered as it could not bear the void armament. The hammer also shattered, but as it did a violent hit smashed into the Marshal's side.
This was the accumulated hits from the batons, and even the pressure of the sphere stored and accumulated since the hammer had been summoned. All in a single blow. The spear had also failed to contain the hit the Knight was trying to store in it.
As the Knight lost consciousness it realised something. In here it couldn't escape, it couldn't summon its army, the void it possessed didn't compare to that of a void lord, and most importantly – it was incomplete. This made its drive to find the sword even more determined – for even if it did not complete the Knight's dreaded soul, it would bring it closer to the heights of a true void being – and even a dreaded one.
Then it moved its thoughts elsewhere.
By her description, and the reaction of those in the void, the Knight was truly nothing like a dreaded being. It had become stronger after learning how to use the void armament, making it come closer to fighting like a true being of the void. And even then, this was the work of the [Vile Armour].
The Knight could've put up a better fight. Even now it could have pushed. Strangely enough, there was no doubt in its mind it could have taken her. Simply preposterous considering this is the biggest ever power gap it had ever faced, over 180 levels stronger. It had actually chosen to take that hit – it also wondered just how much it could take.
There was a problem with going all out right now – even without help from the army. It was about to because of the state this hit could leave it in but didn't. Because it remembered something Avarice had said earlier.
"…I first fight them telling them not to use their best abilities. After they convince themselves, things would change without this rule I remove it – and still crush them. I know this is an assessment match…"
This had initially just told it that she had just treated this like a training match, but it was an assessment match. The first second had almost not registered. Meaning the point of her assessment had still not been met.
'Then what was the point. If Knights are normally assessed in terms of void beings, then how would she assess one such as me – in a way that Vice could not?'
Then it clicked, her point laid with her initial statement about convincing that things could be better if it could use its abilities fully. But that's the thing, most abilities are in fact pacified in battle. Take the Knight, it was a void being itself, and should humans ever go against it, all their powers would be pacified, what then?
But if you look at the divine spirit, it had no problem facing the Knight even with its power gone, instead channelling it in the sword skill it had. So, the point of this battle was not victory through adversity, or adaptability in battle. The point was to survive.
The Knight had realised something wrong when she said that she was going to go all out, but then she still unleashed attacks that the Knight had a fraction of a chance of surviving. So, it began mulling over the details of the battle to gleam some form of wisdom. And it did. It laid in the fact that she had been making indirect hits, which had already convinced the Knight to dodge the direct attack.
But if one thinks back to a world where they were the strongest amongst the weakest. This still meant that they were they were still nothing in the face of the void. But dodging meant that everything behind you would be obliterated.
So, the Knight put it into perspective. Every single molecule had lost sense of itself and solidified from the point of impact of her strikes using the baton. So, now it imagined the effect on all that was behind it, if it somehow dodged that direct hit?
But as it now stood, having taken the hit, every single atom behind the Knight, had not felt even a tremor of this attack, as the Knight had absorbed every single unit of it.
A void being rarely ever needs to protect, so it would have dodged. It knew it could because even though it was minimal – she paused for a second during every hit. Meaning this time, she would have left a long enough gap in her defences to exploit. Sure, the main thing was survival – but not just the Knights.
Even as it faded off into slumber, the Knight still didn't know what lesson the human Knights were forced to learn. But beating something like self-sacrifice into a void being was something only a Marshal/Void lord could pull off. It smiled internally.
She stood there as the sphere came to a halt, with a smile on her face too.
"I still doubt you're a Dreaded being – extremely so. But One thing stands – You are indeed a Knight. A very strange one at that." – The Knight didn't hear her.
She had inflicted as much force on the soul as using the void armament usually did to the Knight. So, this was the first ever time the Knight had actually lost conscience ever from a fight, maybe immobile but not fully incapacitated.
The Knights plan, if it had dodged, went something along these lines:
With a simple but deliberate misleading, the Knight would use the skill [Horror Mirror] just for an instance. She would crush whatever monstrous being from her past quickly. But by using [Visage of Terror], it could delay her enough to force its own void inside her armour during the hit.
And just as she was about to hit again, create a thick void armament on the knuckles of her gauntlet. And they already being stronger means all that force would have been redirected into her own arm. Hopefully this could shatter it, but the chances were low, considering that she had ground her own teeth up to make a baton sturdier that all its weapons combined.
Next, it would implement phase two. At the very least the force should delay how fast she can move that specific arm. And then it would spike the levels of fear one last time to their peak. Using the void in her, the Knight would stop any of her powers instantly.
In this plan the spear would still be there, so using rest of the void, it would be used to stab onto her foot and pin it in place. In the tubulous speeds of this place, she would be flung with the ground. Using the accumulated 'inconveniences', the Knight would be able to throw a hammer strike from a heightened position.
She would block it, but then the Knight would grab onto her soul with [Soul Touch]. Then it would push as many souls as possible inside, including Mugaw. As she deals with them. The Knight would absorb all of its void into itself and deliver a crushing blow by focusing all of the void armament solely on the parts needing support from the void like sabbatons, vambrace, rerebrace, and gauntlet knuckles.
And by timing this hit with the movement of the sphere, thus using her own technique and multiplying the force of the blow beyond its capabilities. And because she had not used her own void to shield, the hit would destabilise her enough for Mugaw to suicidally try consuming her from the inside.
The feather on its head would shatter so that it could use her skill – the one she had been using to control the exact timing of her hits. The solid air was entirely unfiltered brute strength. The only thing she had used a skill for was to time her hits with the movement of the sphere, precise to the point.
The knight knew she had no control over the changes of the sphere, since she had been fighting against them herself, even if it was less affected than the Knight. It also figured out that her soul must be susceptible to Mugaw. Due to the knowledge in the book of souls, it knew her soul had mimicked that of a pure soul, thus receiving its attributes.
The Knight also knew that it could defeat her if it stopped her from using her void, which it did. It also knew it could force the void into her, but for how long before she flushed it out, was up to chance. Mugaw and all the souls would have been lost in that soul raid part, because there was no way they could survive in a void lord's soul without permission, and this culling was the distraction the Knight needed.