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And then, she created something new.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
The flames enveloping Mei ceased their roaring. Instead, they vibrated, as if listening to her mind. The solar energy that normally blazed around her became transparent, molding into geometric structures that rotated slowly—hexagons, spirals, fractal chains. It wasn't just power. It was absolute control.
Dante took a step back.
— This is not merely a technique.
— No, it is not. — Mei smiled. — This is imagination set ablaze.
She rotated one hand upward, as if pulling an idea from space itself.
— The name is... 'Imaginary Dawn.'
— How poetic.
— Yeah, I'm an artist. But I only have one canvas right now. — She raised her fists. — And guess who's going to be the paint?
Dante felt a shiver.
The temperature did not rise.
But the very concept of heat was being rewritten.
Mei advanced. Far too fast.
It was as if Stellar Pulse was being used within the new technique. With every blow, it unfolded into new attacks: flames that transformed into labyrinths, punches that became internal explosions, imaginary slashes that distorted pain itself. It was abstract art in the form of destruction.
Dante was hit five times in less than a second.
His bones cracked.
Akira screamed—not verbally, but from within the body.
Dante heard it.
"She is going to kill this body..."
He tried to counterattack. He summoned shadow blades in the form of serpents, trying to entangle Mei. They were torn apart by claws that did not exist until they were conceived.
— This makes no sense! — Dante roared.
— It doesn't have to, not for beings like you. — She spun in the air, invoking a wave of combat memory and creating a spear forged from the first nightmare she ever had.
She hurled it.
The spear struck Dante in the left shoulder, slamming him into the ground with an explosion that caused the nearby buildings to collapse in waves.
BOOOOM.
Dante slid across the ground until he landed on his back, gasping, his shoulder throbbing—burning, aching, failing. It was as if the attack had struck not just the flesh, but the very idea of that arm's movement.
— You... created a technique that strikes the concept of physical form...?
— Yes. And if you keep analyzing, I'll use one that strikes your idea of existence.
Dante's gaze narrowed.
— How is that possible?
— It's easy. It's because I am Mei Nuhay.
She spun in the air, suspended within her gravitational field of flames, and descended with her knee aimed at Dante's skull.
He dodged by a hair's breadth.
The asphalt was crushed as if a meteor had struck.
He knew he couldn't continue like this.
The Veil needed a few more seconds.
She was pressing too hard.
He began to retreat—not fleeing, but reading the patterns. As Akira would.
"She uses emotion as a channel. She improvises, yes, but there is a root. All art is born from something. I just need... to find that something."
Mei noticed his changing gaze.
— Ah... trying to read the field now? — She walked in circles around him. — You want to understand where my creation begins.
— All creation begins at a point of trauma.
— Yeah... perhaps. — She twirled a finger, and various weapons made of fire materialized around her—a spear, a scythe, a bow. — But that won't help you if you can't breathe long enough to figure it out.
She fired the bow. The arrow exploded mid-air, transforming into a thousand ethereal needles.
Dante protected himself with a shadowy shield, but two needles pierced the side of Akira's body, striking internal points—liver, kidney.
Regeneration began immediately. But it was slowing down.
Mei noticed.
— The portal is helping, but... it's not infinite, is it?
Dante did not answer.
Mei stopped.
She felt it.
— You... are going to try to use the Veil again.
Dante did not smile.
But his eyes gleamed with coldness.
— And if I hit you again, that boy won't be here to save you.
The two stared at each other for long seconds.
Mei then raised her arm. And snapped her fingers.
— Let's see if you can conjure... without breathing.
The pressure in a ten-meter radius intensified, enough for Dante to feel as if he were being burned and crushed, but not enough to kill.
Just enough to knock him out.
The opening was created.
She appeared behind him.
A punch to the kidney.
Another to the neck.
A kick to the ribs.
Stellar Pulse. Stellar Pulse.
Dante tried to retreat, but the world was spinning. He was being swallowed by an impossible sequence of movements. It was as if Mei were dancing between space and time, shaping possibilities while destroying him in each one.
He bled. And for the first time... he did not regenerate immediately.
Mei stopped in front of him.
Her face was also wounded. Her eyes, webbed with fatigue.
— Are you still going to try?
— Always. — Dante replied, spitting blood. — I am stubborn.
She smiled.
— So am I.
And the two collided once more.
The Veil began to emerge.
But she was already anticipating it.
The fire serpentined around Mei Nuhay like a living extension of her soul. Each flare was a thought, each explosion, an impulse testing the limits of reality. And she was thinking too fast for the very notion of time to keep up.
"I will not destroy Akira."
"I cannot."
"But I must defeat Dante."
Thoughts and solutions crossed at an absurd speed, burning out like shooting stars. Mei was transcending. Not just brute power—that, she mastered with prowess. But now, it was her mind that was igniting, sparking new pathways, new routes. She was trying to mold, within her own spiritual energy, a possibility she had never attempted.
A technique that did not exist.
Something capable of striking Dante... without harming Akira.
"Perhaps a sub-layer of the soul?"
"What if I separate the heat from the essence of the blow? What if I shape the structure of the damage like an inverted caress, something that penetrates but does not tear? What if—"
She didn't know what to call it. Not yet. But she could already see it. It was always like this with her. A spark, then the inferno.
— I will succeed — she murmured, alone, as the heat in her eyes took on an incandescent golden hue.
The confrontation seemed to slow for a second.
Dante, shrouded in the shadowy flames dancing like fiery specters around Akira, advanced with an almost divine impetus. But Mei, instead of retreating, smiled.
The flames around her body contracted—not in fear, but in preparation. She was attempting the impossible, and she trusted in it with an absurd faith. This was what set her apart from everyone else.
She always found a way.
The ground exploded beneath her feet as she launched forward, preparing the still-unfinished technique—the particles around her fists began to vibrate at an abnormal frequency, as if the flames were becoming... silent?
Mei spun in the air, ready to strike Dante with this new attack, the closest thing to a solution she had yet conceived—when suddenly, something changed.
At the last instant, Dante's regeneration stopped.
His muscles faltered. The dark aura around Akira's body wavered, hesitant. His gaze returned to normal.
And Mei, upon noticing it... pulled back her blow.
It was instinctive.
She could have killed him. Could have ended it all right there.
But no. Not if she could save him.
Akira was still in there.
That instant of compassion cost her dearly.
— Hehe. — Dante spat, seizing the opening.
With absurd speed, he spun his body, projecting incandescent shadows from his right arm.
The energy distorted the air like shattering glass, and then—
CHAK!
The blade made of black-fire and shadowy energy struck Mei in the flank, tearing her torso nearly in half, piercing the spiritual barrier she had raised at the last second.
A silent scream escaped her lips.
She was thrown with brutality against walls, beams, and structures.
Mei fell to her knees. Blood flowed. Her senses grew dull.
— The intent to kill is what defines the weight of a blow, Mei — said Dante, approaching, Akira's eyes dancing between brown and abyssal black.
She tried to stand, gasping, but her legs failed for a second.
The energy of the blow, it was retarding her regeneration, as if it were killing her energy and her soul piece by piece.
This was it.
Abyssal Energy.
And then... she felt it.
The Veil.
That dark space, where Dante reigned as an absolute king, began to rise in the spiritual plane.
"Not yet..."
She thought, distressed. Not the Veil. If he used the Veil now... she would have no way to maintain her balance. Not with the wound. Not with Akira's soul trapped within the mist.
The Veil was dominion. Imprisonment. Condemnation.
But something was wrong.
The Veil did not form.
The space that should have been sucked into it remained... resistant.
The edges of the spiritual world were vibrating with a strange energy, as if the plane itself were in conflict.
Dante frowned. For a second, he thought Akira was resisting the Veil.
— Hm. That would be... unexpected.
But then he looked around—at the sky, the cracked ground, the shimmering air.
And he understood.
— Ah... — he laughed. — But of course. It's him.
Mei lifted her head, panting.
— What is it...?
— Someone is siphoning the energy from the Abyss... — Dante said, smiling. — And it is preventing me from pulling the Veil. Incredible.
Mei narrowed her eyes.
The city seemed to tremble.
Siphoning... the Abyss?
She then remembered the portal.
She smiled, even wounded.
It was not a smile of irony, nor of absolute confidence. It was the smile of one who had, once again, seen a way out.
— Why are you smiling? — Dante asked.
Mei wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, her eyes burning gold once more.
— Because I've had an idea.
And the fire behind her... changed shape.
To be continued…
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