[2v1 Clash: Luna Aria vs Champion 1 (C1): The Siegehorn.]
[All batants will be transported to an isolated arena.]
[Arena time is accelerated. Board turns continue during active clashes.]
[During active clashes, Masters may play cards on batants without turn restrictions.]
"Now stop drooling about Giant Kai and strap your panties up." Luna grinned. "It’s not simping time."
Aria’s voice came much colder than when she addressed Kaiden. "Focus on the enemy, not me, if you don’t want to be punished again."
"Hah? Look at this bi-"
Three pieces vanished from the board.
A viewing pane materialized above Kaiden’s right hand, translucent and sharp, showing the arena that had just formed around them. Stone floor, high walls, white sky, and the Brute already shaking the ground with its weight at the far end.
His eyes dropped to the board beneath the viewing pane.
While he observed, he understood one thing instantly.
There were only six pieces on his side while seven on the Kaiju’s.
’Double-edged sword.’
For as long as that fight lasted, he was playing short. But if the girls won fast, it became eight versus seven and the temporary gap was worth every second of risk.
He glanced between the viewing pane and the board, watching the fight unfold against the turn timer, and the ratio clicked in his head after a few seconds.
One board turn was roughly five minutes of arena bat. A quick fight would cost him one turn, maybe two. A long one could bleed him for half a dozen.
’I can affect the fights.’ He reached into his remaining hand. Five cards left after Open Field and Double March. He played the first one that made sense.
[Card Played: Empower - 30% power to Luna for this clash.]
Behind his chair, Alexandra leaned forward to watch the viewing pane, golden light still stuttering against Kaiden’s wrist where she’d been working on the cut since before Turn 1.
...
The arena snapped into existence around them, and the Brute was already moving.
Stone floor. White sky. Forty meters of nothing between two women and a creature whose tusks were longer than either of their arms.
Its hide was cracked and pitted like dried riverbed, thick enough to turn steel, and the hooves beneath its bulk had already cratered the ground from standing weight alone.
The low grunt it made when it registered them said the same thing its posture did: a meal had arrived.
Luna held her Stormblade in reverse grip with lightning crawling along the edge. Aria hovered two feet off the ground behind her left shoulder, moonlight pooling at her fingertips as crescents formed in a slow orbit around her wrists.
"We’ve got only a few minutes before Kai loses board advantage," Aria said, her voice calm but her silver eyes already mapping the creature’s joints.
"Entire minutes for this thing?" Luna rolled her neck. "That’s generous."
The Brute charged, hooves splintering stone in a line so direct it could have been drawn with a ruler, tusks lowered, mass fully mitted.
Luna was already gone, lightning crackling in the air she’d vacated as she zipped around the creature’s flank faster than its momentum could correct for.
Her Stormblade came down two-handed on the base of its spine where the hide split into separate plates, and the Empower humming through her arms made the strike land thirty percent heavier than it had any right to.
The blade bounced off the hide and left a white scratch.
Luna stared at the mark she’d made.
A scratch. On the surface of the plating. With a full-power Stormblade swing boosted by a thirty-percent card buff.
"...Right. These are some turbo OP boss monster types that have been roided the fuck out."
The Brute didn’t even flinch.
It turned, and the backhand that followed swung through the space Luna had been standing in a quarter second earlier. She’d zipped clear on pure instinct, lightning trailing from her boots as she crossed ten meters before the limb finished its arc, and the creature’s fist hit the far wall instead.
The wall exploded. Stone blew outward in a spray that peppered Luna as she reformed ten meters away, shrapnel cutting her cheek and shoulder, and she stared at the crater the creature had just put in solid rock with a casual swipe.
’If that had connected, I’d be done. One hit and I’m out of this match.’
Aria’s crescents fired from across the arena, three moonlit arcs punching into the Brute’s skull with everything she had. They struck the plating, fractured the surface, and stopped. Embedded in the hide like arrows in a castle wall, deep enough to stick, nowhere near deep enough to matter.
The Brute shook its head once and the crescents shattered.
Aria’s posure cracked for the first time. She bit her lip, frustrated at how lightly she’d taken this.
The Brute charged again.
...
Kaiden watched the viewing pane and his jaw tightened. Luna’s Stormblade hadn’t cut through the hide. Aria’s crescents had dented the surface and stopped. The Empower buff was active and it wasn’t enough.
’They’re too low level. The raw stat gap is too wide.’
He played another card without hesitating.
[Card Played: Swiftness - 30% speed to Luna for this clash.]
On the viewing pane, Luna dodged the second charge by a wider margin as the speed buff kicked in. She could evade now. She still couldn’t cut through.
’I can’t spend all my cards on a 2v1 fight or it’ll be game over.’
Then a warmth he recognized pulsed in his chest, the same warmth that ran through the bond to every girl connected to his system, but deeper now, concentrated, like a door had been sitting in his ribcage waiting for him to push it open.
Lust Stance.
He didn’t hesitate.
’Let’s see what this stance is all about...’
Both girls lit up like torches, Kaiden’s warmth flooding through them in a wave that turned the gentle candlelight glow into something that burned, and even from the board he could feel it leaving him, his own energy pouring through the system connection and into the two women fighting for their lives in that arena.
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