The male form of Nox was a storm of relentless, adaptive power. His "Mirror Form" was a perfect, maddening defense, a logical paradox that rendered the Infinite Style's vast arsenal null. He was a reflection that struck back harder.
[ANALYSIS: TARGET 'NOX' EXHIBITING PERFECT MIMICRY IN CQC. CURRENT STRATEGY SELF-NULLIFYING.]
[AUTO-BATTLE DURATION: 00:03 REMAINING.]
[RECALCULATING...]
The silver eyes of the Sarah-thing flickered. The Mirror Form was an equation with no solution within its current dataset. It required a variable from outside the system. Its gaze snapped to Kenta, a silent, imperative command conveyed in a nanosecond.
Transfer primary weapon. Now.
Kenta, acting on an instinct deeper than understanding, didn't hesitate. He tossed Hikari no Ha, the Blade of Light.
The moment the Sarah-thing's fingers closed around the hilt, the Infinity Calculation didn't just learn the sword; it performed a total ontological assimilation. It consumed the blade's entire history, its metaphysical properties, the unique resonant frequency of its divine energy, the precise muscle memory of Kenta's entire fighting style, and the faint, lingering echo of its original master, Hikari. It fused this data with the entirety of Earth's martial knowledge and the cold, relentless logic of the System, birthing something new and terrifying.
Nox paused, his mirrored stance faltering, a flicker of curiosity. "A blade? You think a new tool will—"
He never finished.
The Sarah-thing moved. It was not a step, but a vanishing. The air itself seemed to flinch. The concept of a "style" was abandoned. What unfolded was not a sword technique, but a localized reality dysfunction.
"One-Hundredth Style: Smithing Hollow Eve."
The name was the System's designation for this impossible confluence of data.
The world did not slow down. It bent.
Hikari no Ha was no longer a sword. It became a needle of pure causality, a focal point for a calculated reality fracture. The movements were not about cutting, but about editing the fight's very source code. It executed angles that defied physics, striking from positions that were mathematically possible but physically nonsensical.
Nox's Mirror Form, a perfect reactive engine, short-circuited. It tried to mirror the "attack," but there was no single attack to mirror—only a cascading series of impossible, pre-emptive corrections. The blade would be here, and then it would already have been there, having passed through a space Nox's form had already been calculated to occupy three moves in the future.
Thin, glowing lines appeared on Nox's arms, his legs, his torso. Not deep cuts, but perfect, surgical incisions that severed ki pathways and neural connections with terrifying, impersonal precision. He wasn't being wounded; he was being systematically dismantled.
Shock, then raw, primal alarm flashed across Nox's face. He tried to phase, to teleport, to warp space. But the Smithing Hollow Eve had already calculated every escape vector. The blade was always waiting, a paradox given form. He was trapped in a cage of his own predicted future.
[AUTO-BATTLE DURATION: 00:00 REMAINING.]
The silver light vanished from Sarah's eyes like a snuffed candle.
The transcendent precision of the Smithing Hollow Eve evaporated mid-motion. The overwhelming data stream of the Infinity Calculation cut off, and Sarah's consciousness was violently slammed back into the helm of her own body.
The backlash was cataclysmic.
It was not just agony; it was systemic failure. Every muscle fiber, overclocked and strained to its absolute limit, screamed in unison, threatening to tear itself apart from the inside. Her nerves felt flayed, raw and exposed to a world that was suddenly too bright, too loud, too real. The psychic recoil from the System's withdrawal was a sledgehammer to her soul. A silent, breathless scream was trapped in her throat as her vision tunneled into nothingness. Hikari no Ha clattered to the floor beside her collapsing form.
The impossible pressure was gone.
Nox stood panting, his male form bleeding from a dozen perfectly placed, disabling wounds. The shock on his face was absolute. He looked from the collapsed girl to the sword, his mind reeling from the memory of that reality-bending technique.
Then, a darkness deeper than any shadow bled from his wounds, a corrosive power that hissed against the golden light of the Crimson Gala. With a sound like shattering crystal, the ancient barrier, already weakened by the King's death, fractured and then exploded inward, dissolving into motes of fading gold.
Freed from the cage, Nox's form shimmered and dissolved, reforming into the woman. She was battered, her dress torn and stained, but a new, intense light burned in her starlit eyes. She turned her gaze to Kenta, who was rushing to Sarah's side.
The look she gave him was no longer one of mere amusement. It was a look of pure, unadulterated lust, mixed with a hunter's covetous hunger. "To have a partner who can create such beautiful violence..." she purred, her voice a husky whisper that promised depraved pleasures. "We will meet again, my handsome storm. I will make sure of it."
Her eyes then fell to the unconscious Sarah, a flicker of that same terrifying desire in their depths. "And I will have your little spark's beautiful, broken mind for myself."
With one last, lingering, possessive look, she clutched the obsidian key pendant and melted into the shadows, leaving Kenta alone in the ruins.
He knelt, gathering Sarah's trembling, unresponsive body into his arms. She was cold, her breathing shallow and ragged. She was alive, but the cost of their survival was written in the terrifying stillness of her form and the silent scream still etched on her face. They had driven off an LR-ranked entity, but the victory felt like a catastrophic defeat. The price of touching the infinite had nearly burned the vessel to ash.