Chapter 42: Power that Rivals each other

Chapter 42: Chapter 42: Power that Rivals each other

The horns still echoed when Singer stepped onto the floating platform.

Wind slowly flowed by the surface of the polished platform. Carrying the faint dry scent of sand and a bit of metallic tang scent of a severed rock. Far below, the dunes looked endless and small. Above, the sky was a hard, empty blue.

Sophy was already waiting at the opposite edge.

She stood with her red fan half-open, blond hair stirring in the high wind. The same gentle smile she always wore rested on her face, but her eyes were bright with something sharper and darker than friendliness. Motion itself seemed to lean toward her, as if the air, the light, even the platform’s slight drift through the sky seemed to be controlled by her.

Singer lowered her head in the slightest fraction in acknowledgment. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft enough that only Sophy should have heard it—yet every Virtue seated in the distance caught the words clearly.

"I will not hold back." said Singer. Her voice like a bell.

Sophy’s smile widened. She snapped the fan fully open with a crisp, elegant motion. Old characters along the red silk glowed once, then slowly faded.

"I would be disappointed if you did."

For a heartbeat the arena held its silence.

Then Sophy moved.

She did not merely run. She simply ceased to be where she had stood. The space between them collapsed as if distance itself had been ordered to fold. One moment she was thirty paces away; the next her fan was already cutting toward Singer’s throat in a perfect horizontal arc, the edge of the silk carrying a razor of compressed motion that could have split steel into two

But despite such frightening power and speed.Singer’s eyes never widened.

In the same instant her right hand rose. A long, matte-black sniper rifle of pure condensed mana materialized along her arm, the barrel already aligned. She fired once.

The shot was silent.

A thin white line of focused force crossed the short distance and met the edge of Sophy’s fan dead-center.

PENG!!

The collision rang across the sky like a struck bell. Shockwaves rippled outward in concentric rings of distorted light. The platform shuddered beneath their feet.

Sophy’s smile never faltered. She twisted her wrist. The fan reversed direction mid-strike, its motion suddenly multiplying—three identical arcs of red silk appearing in the same instant, each aimed at a different vital point.

Singer stepped once.

Her body blurred sideways. Three precise shots left the rifle in rapid succession, each one finding the exact center of a phantom fan and shattering it into harmless sparks of force. The real fan, still in Sophy’s hand, met the reinforced barrel of the rifle with a sharp metallic crack.

For a fraction of a second the two girls stood locked, red silk pressed against black mana-steel, the pressure between them making the stone beneath their feet fracture in a spiderweb of fine lines.

Then just like that both vanished.

They reappeared in the center of the arena in a storm of colliding techniques. Sophy’s motion control turned every step, every breath, every shift of weight into a weapon. She redirected Singer’s own momentum against her, forced the air to accelerate around her limbs until the very atmosphere became a cage of speeding currents. Singer answered with calm, focused fire—each shot calculated to the millimeter, trajectories adjusted mid-flight by minute shifts of the rifle’s angle, bullets of condensed mana that curved only by her thought.

Far below and around the arena, the watching Virtues sat in perfect stillness.

Fahai’s expression did not change, yet his fingers rested lightly against the arm of his seat. Layla watched with the same faint, almost lazy interest she had shown when she first lifted the mountain. Sophy’s earlier giggles were now gone; her eyes tracked every exchange with fierce, delighted pride.

"She’s faster than I expected." smiled Lady Grace as her face slowly lit up.

Elfaria swallowed. "Sophy has endless mana. She can keep this pace forever."

Grace did not answer. Her gaze remained fixed on the blond girl who was currently rewriting the rules of motion with every flick of her fan—and on the quiet figure whose every shot found its mark as if the future itself had already been calculated by her.

On the platform the pace became inhuman.

Sophy raised her fan high. Every particle of air above the arena suddenly obeyed her. The wind inverted, collapsed, then exploded outward in a spiraling dome of accelerated force meant to crush everything inside it into paste. The very light bent around the technique.

Singer stood in the center of that collapsing sky and dropped to one knee.

The sniper rifle lengthened, the scope unfolding with a soft mechanical click. She exhaled once.

"GOOD DEEDER THIRD WAVE: SOUL PIERCER"

A single shot left the barrel.

It did not travel in a straight line. The bullet of pure force threaded through the weakest point of the collapsing dome, punched a perfect circular hole through the wall of accelerated air, and continued without losing speed. Sophy’s eyes widened a fraction too late.

The shot struck the fan.

PENG!!!!!!

A deafening crack split the sky. The red silk snapped backward. Sophy was thrown across the platform in a violent arc, boots tearing long white scars into the stone before she finally skidded to a stop near the edge. Blood ran from the corner of her mouth. One knee touched the ground. The fan in her hand now bore a clean, smoking hole through its center.

She looked up, still smiling, eyes shining with something that was almost joy.

"Good," she whispered, wiping the blood away with the back of her hand. "Again."

Singer rose slowly, the rifle resting against her shoulder. The high wind tugged at her hair. Far below, the desert waited. Above them, the empty sky watched.

Here, the perfect Battle was about to begin.

Around the floating arena every Virtue leaned forward the smallest fraction, small and insignificant, but that alone showed that truly, this battle will only become more interesting here on out.