In the corner of the battlefield, silver sparks danced and tal rang sharp as Liu i clashed with Tatsumi.
Despite the daggers in her hands and the fire in her eyes, Liu i found herself on the defensive.
Tatsumi's strikes were precise, calculated, every movent born of years, if not centuries of bloody experience.
"Not bad for a child," Tatsumi murmured, her voice like silk laced with steel. She twirled gracefully midair, her blade narrowly missing Liu i's cheek.
But Liu i didn't flinch. She twisted her body, rolled under the strike, and reappeared behind her like a wraith. Slice! A lock of Tatsumi's hair fell.
Tatsumi's eyes narrowed. "Slippery little—"
She spun around and slashed, but Liu i was already gone, leaping onto a beam of light and vaulting herself upward with inhuman agility. Her silhouette blurred like mist.
"Hah! Can't catch ~" Liu i stuck out her tongue mid-air, vanishing again.
Tatsumi's lips tightened. The brat was fast too fast. Not because of sheer speed, but because of unpredictability. Her movents were erratic, wild… untad.
No form. No flow.
And yet it worked.
Tatsumi parried another strike and hissed. "You're not trained. You're like a chaos wrapped in human flesh."
Liu i's grin widened. "You can't predict chaos, Auntie."
The word "Auntie" made sothing twitch in Tatsumi's brow.
"Oh, now you die."
Tatsumi's blade shimred with soul force as she shot forward like a bullet, ready to silence the girl.
And Liu i, she vanished like the wind again, a blur of laughter and flickering steel.
Tatsumi's eyes narrowed as she vanished from midair, landing with a thunderous crack onto the earth.
"Enough running."
With a single, deliberate stomp, she released a ripple of soul force deep into the ground.
The terrain answered her will like a trained beast, quaking, shifting, rising.
Jagged stone pillars erupted all around, twisting into a miniature maze.
The once-flat battleground beca a distorted forest of uneven platforms and sharp ridges.
Visibility was cut in half.
Liu i stumbled mid-leap, forced to flip back and land. Her eyes darted around as she found herself boxed in.
"Not so fast now, little ghost," Tatsumi's voice echoed from above, bouncing off the stone.
"Let's see how clever you are when your feet can't dance freely."
A spire of stone lunged up from beneath Liu i's feet like a spear. She jumped just in ti, but another one followed, and another each one predicting her trajectory more accurately than the last.
"Oh crap oh crap oh crap," Liu i hissed under her breath, sliding between two pillars.
She gripped her daggers tightly, eyes scanning. "Alright... new ga, Auntie."
Her figure shimred, and she began to vanish once more but even with her speed, the terrain now belonged to Tatsumi.
Tatsumi's blade arced through the air like lightning precise, fluid, and vicious.
Clang!
Steel kissed air, again. Liu i had already slipped to the side, her daggers flashing as she twisted her body impossibly tight to avoid the strike.
Again. Twice. Three tis.
Tatsumi's blade cut only air, her precision unraveling with every miss.
"Hold still!" Tatsumi snarled, her tone breaking for the first ti.
Grace gave way to frustration as she slashed with more speed and fury.
Yet every ti, just before impact, Liu i moved. A sidestep. A duck. A bend at the waist that left her hair singed but her skin untouched.
Tatsumi's eyes narrowed. She's not even thinking… She doesn't know how she's doing it.
Liu i panted, her back pressed against a jagged stone wall. Her chest rose and fell with every rapid breath, eyes wide not with confidence, but panic.
Her hands trembled as she held her daggers in front of her. Her legs twitched ready to bolt, even when she didn't tell them to.
It was as if her instincts were in overdrive, moving her without permission.
Tatsumi circled, now slower, watching.
"You little slippery rat," she hissed. "Are you dodging ... or is sothing dodging for you?"
Liu i's lips trembled. "Master... help..."
She didn't realize she had even whispered it.
And yet, even as fear threatened to choke her, her feet shifted again just in ti to avoid a blade that would have ended it all.
She was terrified, this was the first ti she had ever faced soone she couldn't win.
But she was still standing.
And Tatsumi was getting angry.
Tatsumi narrowed her eyes and brought her fingers together in a sharp motion. click.
The earth beneath them trembled.
All around Liu i, jagged rocks burst upward, twisting and reshaping mid-air like molten steel guided by invisible hands. Blades. Spears. Shards. Swords.
Dozens of them. Hundreds.
They hovered only for a breath. Then—
Whoosh!
They flew.
From above, below, the sides—even from behind.
Tatsumi grinned wickedly. "Let's see you dodge this, little rat."
Liu i's eyes widened in sheer panic. Her body moved, one step, two but it wasn't enough. There were too many. Far too many.
She twisted, ducked, flipped through a gap barely wider than her waist—but one blade sliced her side. Another grazed her thigh. A third nicked her cheek, drawing blood.
Blood mixed with the dust at her feet, turning it black.
"Aaahh!" she cried, stumbling.
But Liu i… didn't fall instead her knees bent. Her eyes flared with sothing wild. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, louder than the storm of blades.
Then—Snap.
A jolt tore through her spine, like soone had yanked her soul forward.
Her heartbeat slowed, then thundered. The world sharpened into terrifying clarity.
Her daggers shimred faintly, as if breathing with her.
She pushed off the ground with new strength, a blur even to Tatsumi's trained eyes.
A sword of stone grazed her shoulder but the others missed entirely.
Tatsumi's eyes widened.
"She's... faster?" she muttered.
Liu i landed hard, crouched, breathing heavily. Blood dripped down her leg, but she looked up, eyes blazing.
"Your rocks are stupid," she said, voice trembling, but proud.
Tatsumi's eye twitched.
"Enough gas. MUD LAND!"
Her voice split the air like thunder.
The entire battlefield responded in a violent roar. The towering stone pillars liquefied in an instant, collapsing into thick, bubbling mud.
The ground trembled as the sludge surged like a tidal wave, hungry, suffocating racing toward Liu i with monstrous force.
"You think you're clever?!" Tatsumi snarled. "Let's see how clever you are when you're drowning in the earth!"
But then—
Hissss…
The mud stopped.
Steam hissed into the air where the sludge approached Liu i… and evaporated.
A shimring aura had blood around her, thin but burning, peeling the moisture from the mud before it could touch her.
Her once-pristine battle dress was now scorched and torn but it burned with flickering abyssal flas, dark and cruel.
The attire she'd won from the abyss awakened at last.
The dress clung to her fra like living fire, black lace curling into fla-shaped patterns, the air warping around her.
Tatsumi's lips parted. "What…"
Liu i stepped forward slowly, boots splashing into the mud but no stain touched her.
The very earth hissed and recoiled.
With every step, her grin grew wider.
"Any."
She took another step.
"More."
Another. Flas curled around her daggers. Her body swayed with a predator's rhythm.
"Tricks?"
Liu i's head tilted slightly, her bangs casting a shadow over her glowing eyes.
Her smile stretched across her face like a crescent moon, wild and unhinged.
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