"That's one," Mira said. Mark's tattered body lay sprawled on the scorched earth, his eyes rolled back in unconsciousness.
A sharp, confident smile played on Mira's lips as she scanned her remaining opponents. "Kekeke... what's the matter?" she scoffed, her posture deceptively relaxed. "Are you scared?"
"Damn it," Cara grunted, her knuckles white as she gripped her weapon. "Lizzy!"
"Y-yes?!" Lizzy squeaked, clutching her staff as a bead of cold sweat rolled down her temple.
"Support magic. Now!" Cara roared.
As she spoke, a massive boulder hurtled toward them.
BOOM.
A screen of dust erupted upon impact. Through the haze, Cara and Phil blurred forward, their bodies encased in a transparent yellow hue.
Haste, Mira noted, raising her staff.
"Phil! Paddle ball tactic!" Cara commanded, her lead foot digging into the soil as she braked.
"Noted!" Phil replied. In one fluid motion, he launched his short sword. It tore through the air, creating a visible ripple of displaced mana. Mira swung her staff to intercept—
Zzip.
Cara's whip lashed out, snaring the hilt of the flying sword and yanking it back. The yellow mana coating Cara's frame flared into a violent red, her Strength variables surging. With a grunt, she redirected the blade's trajectory straight for the side of Mira's head.
Strengthen, Mira commanded internally. A coat of red mana blossomed over her skin as she swung her staff upward.
Fwip.
The whip released the sword. Mira's eyes widened as the blade whistled past the back of her head. Time seemed to dilate. In her peripheral vision, a figure emerged from the blur.
Clasp.
Phil caught the sword mid-air, a sadistic grin stretching from ear to ear. "Got yo' ass," he hissed, driving the steel into Mira's temple.
Splurt.
Blood sprayed as Mira's head snapped sideways. Her vision began to flicker into darkness.
"What the..." Phil's triumph turned to confusion. He tugged, but the weapon was anchored. Mira's own muscles and bone were gripping the steel in a defiant vice. "Cara! I—I can't get my sword out!"
Mira hadn't dodged. She couldn't. Instead, she had dumped raw mana directly from her Star into a localized healing spell the millisecond the steel broke skin. The shock of the impact had forced her brain into a state of hyper-arousal, skyrocketing her calculation speed. She had manually contracted her torn muscles and fused her fractured skull around the blade.
"You almost had me there," Mira whispered.
Phil leaped back, his boots skidding across the dirt in terror.
"An impressive tactic," Mira continued. She reached up, momentarily suspending the healing to slide the short sword out of her own skull.
Thud.
She tossed the bloody steel aside and flicked her hair back, the wound sealing instantly. "It would have worked... if I wasn't me."
She slammed her staff into the ground. "Room."
"R-room!" Lizzy screamed in response.
Two translucent domes of mana expanded instantly, grinding against one another before halting.
"Laser!" Mira commanded. Two beams of concentrated red light erupted from the ground, homing in on Cara and Phil.
"Lizzy!" Cara shouted, diving away from the searing heat.
"I know!" Lizzy gritted her teeth. She began scaling down her Room, forcing it deeper into Mira's territory.
Mira felt the intrusion and immediately ramped up the mana pressure.
It's decelerating, Lizzy realized, her jaw tight. Ihave to match the frequency... shift the phase to 0.0... sync the X and Y axis...
Done! Using 95% of her Star's capacity, Lizzy perfected the synchronization. Her Room slid into a uniform velocity, ghosting through Mira's pressure.
She extended a thin violet filament of mana, threading it through the gaps in Mira's calculations until it touched Mira's abdomen.
"Ignition!" Lizzy yelled.
A fiery explosion engulfed Mira. Using the distraction, Lizzy used her Room to reel in Cara and Phil, dragging them back toward her own border.
"Phew... we're out!" Phil gasped as they crossed into the safety of Lizzy's expanded dome.
"We need to retreat," Cara panted, staring at the smoke where Mira had stood.
"Sure thing. Lemme jus—" Lizzy stopped. An electric jolt, cold and jagged, surged through her skull.
"Aghhhhh!" She collapsed, her staff clattering to the ground as she clutched her head.
My head... it's being torn apart... Lizzy's thoughts fractured. She's brute forcing... my Room—
The sound of shattering glass echoed through the mana-plane as Lizzy's Room disintegrated.
"Ignition," a cold voice drifted through the smoke.
"Fuck!" Phil cursed.
BOOM.
The mana Lizzy had used for her own filament was turned against her.
Mira had hijacked the coordinates. A massive explosion swallowed all three hunters, the force knocking them into total darkness.
"Disperse," Mira said softly, walking out of the dying flames. Her burns were already knitting back together. Her Room dissipated, taking the lingering heat with it.
"Huff... huff... finally." Mira slumped, her body trembling. The toll of the high-speed calculations, the coordinate tracking, and the brute-force override was finally crashing down on her.
But she was the only one left standing.