The air in the gilded cage didn't just crackle; it hummed with a new, terrifying frequency. The Sarah-thing stood poised, its silver eyes seeing not a person, but a complex web of data—muscle density, ki flow, psychological tells Nox didn't even know she had. The Infinity Calculation had finished its initial analysis. The pre-fight was over.
Nox launched a probing strike, a needle-thin lance of shadow aimed to paralyze. The Sarah-thing didn't block or dodge. It flowed. Its body performed a subtle, almost imperceptible Tai Chi redirection, guiding the shadow-lance past its shoulder while its lead foot stamped down in a Kyokushin stomp that shattered the marble where Nox's foot had been a millisecond prior.
Nox's eyes widened, her smirk faltering for a nanosecond. She pressed the attack, becoming a whirlwind of open-palm strikes and joint locks, a fluid, Aikido-inspired style meant to control and dismantle.
The response was a brutal symphony of martial logic. The Sarah-thing used Wing Chun's centerline theory to deflect the palms, its arms a blur of simultaneous attack and defense. When Nox tried to secure a wristlock, the Sarah-thing's arm became like water, employing a Jujutsu reversal that turned the lock back on her, forcing Nox to disengage with a sharp hiss. A low, powerful Muay Thai kick aimed at Nox's supporting leg was met not with a block, but with a Capoeira escape, a fluid, spinning evasion that seamlessly transitioned into a Savate kick aimed at Nox's temple.
It was no longer a fight; it was a masterclass. The Sarah-thing was a living encyclopedia of violence. It used Krav Maga's ruthless efficiency to target eyes and throat, only to shift into the graceful, sweeping throws of Judo to use Nox's own momentum against her. It would close the distance with Boxing's explosive footwork, deliver a series of shattering body blows, then drop into a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu guard, its limbs entangling Nox's in a web of impossible leverage.
Nox, the LR-ranked entity, was being out-techniqued.
A wicked, exhilarated laugh burst from her lips as she barely twisted away from a Silat scissor-lock meant to break her spine. "Marvelous! Truly! To be pressed like this… it's so satisfyingly terrifying!" She was a connoisseur of power, and this display of absolute, technical perfection was a rare vintage.
Kenta could only watch, his swords held loosely at his sides. He had seen the Auto-Battle mode before, but this… this was different. This was colder, deeper, more absolute. The Sarah who laughed, who got frustrated, who had just shared a date with him—was she even in there? Or was this just the System, a ghost wearing her skin, performing a brutal, beautiful dance of death?
The fight escalated. Nox, her female form starting to sweat, her perfect hair now disheveled, began to incorporate her reality-warping powers. She would flicker in space, appearing behind the Sarah-thing. But the System had already calculated the probability. Without even looking, the Sarah-thing executed a perfect Ninjutsu smoke-step evasion, leaving an afterimage that Nox's strike passed through, while the real Sarah-thing was already delivering a Pankration blow to her kidney.
[AUTO-BATTLE DURATION: 00:10 REMAINING.]
The alert flashed in the periphery of the shared consciousness. The clock was ticking.
Seeing the shift in the System's focus, a new, dark amusement bloomed in Nox's eyes. "Oh, but a lady has her limits in this form," she purred, leaping back from a furious Arnis stick-fighting simulation using condensed ki. "Let's try a different fit."
Her form dissolved into a swirl of shadow and starlight. When it re-coalesced, the beautiful woman was gone. In her place stood a man. He was just as strikingly handsome as the female form was beautiful, with sharp, androgynous features, broader shoulders, and the same starlit eyes that now held a more aggressive, predatory glint. He cracked his neck, a grin spreading across his face.
"Much better," Nox said, his voice a deeper, more resonant version of the previous purr. "More power. Less… restraint."
He didn't flicker. He blitzed. The male form was raw, overwhelming force compared to the female form's precise, controlling style. He moved like a thunderclap, his fist slamming forward with the concussive force of a meteor.
The Sarah-thing met him. It abandoned finesse. It rooted itself, channeling the unyielding stability of Sumo, and met the fist with a Goshin-jutsu reinforced block. The impact was a physical shockwave that tore up the remaining marble tiles. The Sarah-thing skidded back a foot, its arm trembling, but it held.
Nox laughed, a booming, joyful sound. He followed up with a barrage of attacks—Sambo throws, Kajukenbo's brutal street-fighting combinations, the powerful, linear strikes of Kenpo. The Sarah-thing adapted instantly, becoming a mirror of brutal efficiency. It used Jeet Kune Do's philosophy of intercepting his attacks before they fully developed. It blended Eskrima's flowing weapon principles into its empty-hand strikes, its limbs becoming bladed and hard.
It was a primal dance of two forces of nature—one an ancient, shapeshifting entity of immense power, the other a perfect, temporary intelligence housed in a mortal shell, wielding the collective combat wisdom of an entire world. The gilded cage shook with their conflict, a testament to the fact that for ten more minutes, the impossible was being forced into the realm of probability. The question hung in the air, thick as the dust: when the clock ran out, what would be left?