Lloyd felt the woman's fist impact against his face, crushing his nose and sending his head backward.
But she didn't let him fall, she grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him forward to attack again, this time with an elbow.
The boy hadn't had time to react, her speed was explosive.
Before she was also fast, Lloyd could only counter her blows because he made small movements and read her attacks.
But now he couldn't even see the attack coming.
"Wuahahaha!" The woman started laughing like a madwoman while throwing a series of frantic blows against the young man's face.
Lloyd managed to react, he couldn't see anything, but he could feel the constant blows; he quickly started healing himself and reversed the impact force from strong to weak.
"That's all? Don't disappoint me now!" the woman lifted the boy, then dropped him on her knee... His back cracked.
Lloyd felt the air leave his lungs, while feeling a whiplash in his back.
The woman let him fall to the ground.
"Tsk, I thought you'd put up a bit more of a fight."
Lloyd didn't respond, he felt exhausted, he'd used a lot of magical power, and the pain he felt was unbearable.
Couldn't he win?
No... He couldn't end like this... If the boy was going to die, at least he'd risk it until the last moment.
Lloyd's senses shut off, to feel the magical power inside him. He'd spent a lot, healing was costly, creation too.
But... did it matter?
What Lloyd had considered was something impossible, illogical. But he had nothing to lose trying.
If his magical power was almost empty, he'd reverse that using antithesis.
"Shit... But what am I saying, it's me who went overboard," the woman brought her hands to her head agitated. "I only had to—"
The girl didn't continue, an enormous amount of magical power was released. She turned back to see Lloyd, whose body was rising unnaturally.
"Hehe.... Haha... KUAHAHAHA!" A macabre laugh escaped his throat, while bringing his hand to his forehead. "So it was true... All this time I was only limiting myself, guiding myself by common sense, when I'm a singularity that defies logic. But I won't hold back anymore. [Evolution]."
Lloyd smiled, upon saying that, his red eyes shone intensely, fixing on that woman.
His pride grew along with his power.
He extended his hand, in which a sword manifested again and pointed at Leona with it.
"I can see it. So that's how the [Eye of Astaroth] works?"
His pupil deformed, adopting the shape of a star.
Evolution worked, and had allowed him to create a new technique born from the [Sword of Belphegor].
But not only that, Lloyd used [Evolution] to constantly increase his magical power, while reversing the principle by which his magic was spent when using his hereditary ritual.
Now, using magic granted him more magical power.
He'd managed to establish a formula to obtain unlimited magic, while also starting to constantly evolve his body.
"What are you talking about so much? Attack!" The woman attacked again, her apparent nervousness had disappeared.
However, this time Lloyd could react.
The boy threw a cut against the air, instead of sending a single cut, a rain of them was born with that movement.
Ground, columns, walls, air; everything was divided by thousands of cuts.
The woman had to cover herself with her arms, and give up the attack to defend herself.
Fine cuts were drawn on her skin, unlike the environment, Leona showed herself to be monstrously resistant... Something Lloyd expected.
"[Reverse]" the boy lifted his index finger upward with a circular movement.
Upon saying that, large jets of blood came out of each cut.
Now, the weaker the wound, the more damage it would do. The boy had managed to pierce through her Touki with those cuts after all.
But Leona didn't scream, she simply laughed.
"Finally this gets interesting," she said.
The wounds stopped bleeding.
"Huh?" Lloyd blinked confused.
The [Eye of Astaroth] allowed him to obtain information about the environment as lines and points that represented a weakness.
Lloyd could create them too, generating a mystical phenomenon that induced an "artificial weakness" on a target.
However, the points drawn on Leona... Had disappeared.
The warrior's fist pierced through the air with force.
Lloyd raised his forearm in defense mode, as soon as the arm came into contact with his arm, he imagined how the attack's vector reversed.
Leona's arm turned backward, breaking at the elbow section, in an unnatural movement.
Using his ability on the woman spent a lot of magical power, but that was no longer a problem.
With unlimited magic and an almost omnipotent ability, there would be no enemy that could stand against him.
Lloyd counterattacked with his sword, throwing a thrust to the woman's belly. He employed [Dash] and [Weak to strong].
However, the sword bent at the edge and broke. Leona had flexed her leg and threw a kick at him.
The blond didn't hesitate to use antithesis to reverse the attack's vector again, but this time it didn't work, he received the attack and went flying backward, crashing into a distant wall.
"Shit," he cursed while coughing blood. "Why doesn't it work?"
"Your tricks won't work twice on me shorty," Leona laughed, while lunging at him.
The ground, which had been shattered, seemed to melt, as if it had become a gelatinous mass.
In fact, that's exactly what had happened, Lloyd had reversed its properties for that.
"So you have that kind of power... Interesting," Lloyd had read enough manga to know what power Leona had.
Adaptation.
But luckily, she didn't seem to be able to regenerate.
He only had to use enough tricks to finish her.
The woman didn't hesitate, flexed her legs and then propelled herself.
Even with such an irregular surface, the woman managed to employ enough force to propel herself toward Lloyd.
She didn't even have to use aura.
But the boy was already prepared.
"Hasta la vista baby," he said with a sharp smile, while again rotating his index finger and pointing upward.
Hand seals are another way to strengthen a ritual, though Lloyd was improvising his own gestures before using real seals.
And even so, they were effective.
The young man had reversed how gravity's force acted on Leona, making it repel her instead of attracting her.
The woman shot upward.
The boy walked a bit then looked at the sky, using his hand to cover the sun a bit.
"Bon Voyage," he said with a smile. "She went to the infinity and beyond, hahaha."
The boy laughed at his own joke, euphoric, he felt fantastic, that fight was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.
"Shit, did she adapt to that too? I should have imagined," the boy jumped backward, and then, the woman landed hard on the ground.
"Grrr, enough tricks," she growled.
Looking, the boy noticed slight perturbations in the air, and understood it.
She hadn't adapted, she'd employed her spiritual pressure on herself to return to the ground.
In the novel, spiritual pressure was invisible, but left small perturbations in the air, like tangible vibrations.
Like when it's very hot.
"Why? I thought cheap tricks didn't work on you."
Besides, it was noticeable she was uncomfortable at that moment.
And if so, it meant two things.
"Shut up bastard! You're starting to piss me off," her teeth clenched, while lunging at him again.
Lloyd didn't flinch.
"I think I already saw what your weakness is," The woman had been suspended in the air, before being able to hit him, struggling in vain against that phenomenon she couldn't explain.
"Either you can't adapt to external phenomena or you can't adapt to things you don't understand," Lloyd's eyes shone with malice. "Though it must be the first, because otherwise you couldn't adapt to anything, HAHAHA."
"Grrr! Damn shitty brat," the woman cursed with rage, writhing in the air, still suspended.
Lloyd had reversed a property of an axiom, of a logical rule.
For everyone it's obvious that when an object approaches another, the distance the object must travel is increasingly smaller.
But, reversing this, Lloyd created a formula to prevent it.
Now, when an object approaches another, the space between them is increasingly larger.
This seen from outside gives the sensation that the object in question is suspended, however it's simply that the distance it's traveling is increasingly smaller.
Though it occurs at an imperceptible level.
What's the consequence? That the object trapped in this technique can't move in any direction.
"Well, now that you're at my mercy, what will I do with—"
A strong pain hit his chest, it wasn't an attack, it came from within.
Lloyd hugged himself while his body doubled over in pain. His magical power evaporated, the world began to spin while he started feeling chills.
It was a strange pain, though his senses told him what had been damaged wasn't his body... But his root.
The pain was intense, air refused to enter his lungs and he couldn't even scream in pain.
Meanwhile, the woman fell to the ground, and got up with fury.
"Reached your limit? Serves you right," she said with rage while extending her hand to lift him by the hair. He could only writhe in pain. "I'm going to make you swallow your words son of a bitch."
The tables had turned again, and this time, Lloyd had no idea how he could be saved.