Thirteen days.
Thirteen days of uninterrupted combat, potions swallowed on their knees, two hours of sleep stolen on the cold arena floor before Alfred woke them with a voice that was gentle but immovable.
Gentlemen. It's time.
The carts had emptied gradually. Jules brought new ones every morning without a word, with the regularity of a tide.
Yuma and Enji's bodies had changed.
Not in any way visible at first glance. But in the way they moved. The way they anticipated. The way they breathed between attacks. Something had hardened in them — not their muscles, not their mana. Something deeper. An endurance that hadn't existed two weeks ago.
The clone had put them on the ground hundreds of times.
They had gotten back up hundreds of times.
And each time they rose, they were a little faster than the time before.
The new techniques had been born from exhaustion and necessity.
Not from a plan. Not from structured training. They had emerged in the heat of combat, when the old ones were no longer enough and the body reached for something new out of pure instinct.
Yuma — Lightning:
Chain of Sparks — a series of electric propulsions chained together without pause, changing direction at each impact like a ricocheting bullet. Difficult to follow. Difficult to anticipate.
Yuma — Fire:
Brazier's Mantle — a layer of compressed fire covering his entire body in a thin coat. Every hit he lands burns. Every hit he takes is partially absorbed by the flames.
Yuma — Lightning:
Muffled Thunder — an electric discharge released not in a strike, but into the ground at the moment of landing. The shockwave travels under the opponent's feet and disrupts their balance.
Yuma — Fire:
Final Conflagration — both fists loaded with compressed fire simultaneously, released at the same time on the same target. Doubles the impact but empties the mana reserve almost entirely.
Enji — Ice:
Whistling Blade — a thin plate of ice projected horizontally at high speed, sharp on the edges, that whistles through the air like a saw blade. Difficult to see coming head-on.
Enji — Fire:
Wall of Embers — a dense curtain of fire drawn from ambient mana, serving as both shield and trap. Anyone who passes through it gets burned. Enji can move it slowly.
Enji — Ice:
Polar Column — a massive column of ice bursting straight up from the ground beneath an opponent's feet. Not to trap — to launch. If it connects, the target goes airborne.
Enji — Fire:
Guided Spark — a small sphere of ambient-mana fire that Enji can control at distance after launching it, adjusting its trajectory through thought alone. Slow, but impossible to anticipate over time.
The fourteenth day rose like the others.
Grey. Cold. The arena marked with hundreds of traces — black burns, melted ice patches, impact craters in the stone.
But that morning, something was different.
A silhouette was seated in the stands.
Reishin.
He hadn't said anything when he arrived. He was looking at the arena, the traces, the half-empty carts, Alfred with his notebook full of notes. He was looking at his two students.
Yuma and Enji straightened when they saw him.
"You're here," Yuma said.
"For an hour," Reishin replied.
"You watched?"
"Yes."
He came down into the arena slowly, hands in his pockets. His gaze moved across Yuma, across Enji, across their postures, their minor injuries, their eyes.
He stopped.
"You've changed."
It wasn't a compliment. It was an observation — delivered with the precision of someone measuring the distance between two points.
"We tried to beat him," Enji said. "Every day. Several times a day."
"I know. Alfred kept me informed."
Alfred gave a discreet nod from his chair.
"And yet," Reishin said, looking at the clone standing motionless at the center of the arena. "He's still standing."
Silence.
"You have one hour. If you don't put him down in that hour, the decision falls."
He went back up into the stands and sat down.
Yuma and Enji looked at each other.
"Wait," Yuma said, turning toward Reishin. "One piece of advice. Just one."
Reishin looked at him.
A silence.
"Go faster than him."
Yuma opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"That's it?"
"That's all you need."
Yuma turned toward Enji.
Enji was looking at the arena floor.
His eyes moved slowly — from the marked stone to the melted ice traces, to the lightning impacts, to the burns. Then to his own hands.
Something began moving in his head.
"Yuma."
"Yeah."
"Your maximum speed. Thunder Dance at full power on normal ground — how fast is that?"
"I don't know exactly. A lot."
"And if the ground helped you go even faster?"
Yuma frowned.
"How would you —"
"A skating rink."
Silence.
Yuma looked at the floor.
Looked at Enji.
Looked at the floor again.
"If I cover the whole arena in ice..."
"Smooth. As smooth as possible. Almost frictionless."
"With the Thunder Dance and the electric pulses as propulsion..."
"Your speed will multiply. The clone won't be able to predict your trajectories because they'll be too fast and too unpredictable."
"And what do you do while that's happening?"
"I hold him. I keep him occupied. I stop him from focusing on you."
Yuma thought for two seconds.
A slow smile pulled at his lips.
"That's a good plan."
"I know."
In the stands, Reishin said nothing. But something passed through his eyes.
The clone moved first — as always.
No wind-up. No warning.
It vanished.
Hayate.
The burst of wind beneath its feet launched it toward Enji in a fraction of a second — near-teleportation, the distance covered before the eye could track it.
Enji pivoted on instinct.
"Whistling Blade!"
The ice plate split the air at chest height. The clone slipped aside with a minimal shift — and the sharp edge grazed its shoulder instead of hitting clean.
Not enough.
Yuma's Chain of Sparks arrived from the left.
Three chained impacts. The clone staggered back two meters — off-balance, not down.
"It's falling back more than before!" Yuma shouted.
"Keep pressing!"
Enji struck the ground with both palms.
Frost Coffin.
The columns burst up — not to trap this time. To force displacement.
The clone jumped right.
Exactly where Yuma was waiting.
Shattering Spark.
Direct hit to the shoulder. The wind-form buckled under the discharge.
"WE'RE HITTING IT!"
"It's not enough yet!"
The clone steadied itself.
Its white eyes swept the arena for a fraction of a second.
And it understood.
It didn't wait for the skating rink to be finished.
"Kūha."
No wide gesture. Just a sharp clap of both palms — and the invisible wind disc crossed the arena in a straight line, silent, without a single visible disturbance in the air.
Enji didn't see it coming.
He felt it on impact — a cutting force in his ribs that tore him off the ground and sent him into the back wall.
BANG.
He slid down the stone, one hand on his ribs, grimacing.
"I'm fine!"
The clone turned toward Yuma.
"Reppū."
The wind burst from its open palm — percussive, direct, no flourishes — and launched Yuma backward before he could adjust his trajectory.
Yuma planted his feet, resisted for two meters, stopped.
"Enji, how long do you need?"
"Thirty seconds."
"I've got him."
The clone advanced.
Yuma didn't wait.
"Brazier's Mantle."
The fire compressed around him in a thin coat — nearly invisible, just a faint shimmer in the air around his body. He charged straight at the clone.
The clone raised its hand.
"Kazabane."
Several wind blades fanned out from its spread fingers — wide, covering the entire area in front of it. Impossible to dodge entirely.
Yuma took it.
The blades cut his jacket, his arm, his side — but the Brazier's Mantle absorbed part of the impact and every blade that grazed his skin burned the air around it, deflected slightly.
He arrived anyway.
First hit — left fist into the clone's ribs. The fire burned where it struck.
Second hit — right elbow to the shoulder. The wind-form fractured slightly.
The clone stepped back.
Just one step.
And countered.
"Hayate."
The wind burst beneath its feet — instant acceleration — repositioned it out of range in a fraction of a second. Yuma's third strike hit nothing.
"Reppū."
The percussive blast came from the front. Yuma took it, pushed back a meter, still standing.
"Thirty seconds," Enji said from across the arena.
He was on his knees, both palms flat against the stone floor.
The ice spread.
Not in columns. Not in lances.
In a sheet.
A smooth, perfect surface, bright as a mirror — covering the entire arena in under three seconds. The cold rose instantly. Mist appeared in the air.
The clone lost a fraction of its grip.
Just a fraction.
But it was enough.
"NOW!" Enji shouted.
Yuma activated the Thunder Dance.
And everything changed.
On normal ground, the Thunder Dance was fast.
On Enji's rink, it was something else entirely.
Every electric pulse beneath his feet converted into pure speed — no friction to absorb it, no resistance to slow it down. Yuma disappeared.
Not the way he usually did. Not as a visible electric arc.
He disappeared for real.
A trail of light. Then another. Then another — in a different direction. Then another still.
The clone turned its head.
Too slowly.
First impact — right shoulder. Yuma was already gone.
Second impact — left flank. Already past.
Third — back. Fourth — knee. Fifth — sternum.
The impacts chained together too fast to count, too unpredictable to block. The clone's wind-form buckled at each strike, tried to stabilize, buckled again.
The clone went still.
"Arashi."
It released its mana in concentric waves from its position — a storm of wind radiating in every direction at once, blanketing the entire arena. Enemy projectiles would deflect. Movement would slow. And on the rink, the Arashi carved turbulence into the air — invisible resistance that fractured Yuma's trajectories.
The light trails splintered.
Yuma lost two meters of momentum on each pass. His direction changes grew less sharp. His hits less clean.
"It's countering!" Enji shouted.
"I KNOW!"
Yuma pushed harder. Thunder Dance at full power, Brazier's Mantle so every contact burned through the resistance, Chain of Sparks to change direction in the gaps between turbulences.
It was no longer pure speed against a standing opponent.
It was speed against wind. Instinct against a zone of total control.
The light trails still carved arcs in every direction.
A rose window.
Red and gold on white ice.
But the Arashi held.
The clone began moving slowly toward the center of the arena — its defensive instinct, where the wind waves were densest.
Enji watched it.
He understood what that meant.
If the clone reached the center and held the Arashi stable, Yuma wouldn't be able to accelerate enough. The angle would be lost.
"Guided Spark."
The small sphere of fire appeared in his palm and launched — slowly at first, too slow to threaten anything. But Enji guided it through thought, searching for the angle. Not toward the clone. Toward the ground, just in front of it. Toward the exact center of the arena.
The sphere struck the floor a meter ahead of the clone.
The fire explosion was small — but on the frozen rink, it created a brutal disruption in the ice. A burst of cold steam and fragments that destabilized the clone's footing just enough to break its repositioning.
One fraction of a second of instability.
Yuma was already there.
Final Conflagration.
Both fists — loaded with compressed fire to the limit, the flames invisible from how tightly they were packed — struck simultaneously into the clone's chest.
The detonation was low. Massive. Internal.
The Arashi collapsed at once — the wind waves dying with the clone's cohesion.
The wind-form came apart.
It stepped back one step.
Two steps.
Its knees bent.
And it fell.
Silence.
The cracked ice. The fire and lightning trails fading slowly on the white surface. A rose window of incandescent marks — red, gold, blue — carved into Enji's rink.
The clone was on its knees, one hand on the ground.
It raised its head toward them.
"Victory."
Simply said. No emotion. But in the clone's mouth — in that voice that was Reishin's — the word carried a particular weight.
Yuma stayed standing for one second.
Then his legs gave out.
He sat down on the ice, arms at his sides, breathing in ragged bursts.
Enji collapsed beside him a moment later.
They stayed there, side by side on the rink, staring up at the arena ceiling.
Slow applause echoed through the stands.
Alfred was rising from his chair, striking his gloved hands together with measured precision.
"Well done, gentlemen. Two weeks. Fourteen days. One hundred and eighty-seven confrontations."
He consulted his notebook.
"And one victory."
The other staff applauded quietly from their posts.
Footsteps descended the stands.
Reishin stopped at the edge of the rink. He looked at the rose window of marks carved into the ice. He looked at the clone dissolving slowly into spirals of wind. He looked at his two students lying on their backs.
Yuma raised an arm in his direction without turning around.
"We won."
"Yes."
"So we join the guild."
Reishin looked at the arm extended toward him.
Then at Yuma's face — exhausted, burned, smiling.
Then at Enji — eyes closed, a half-smile at the corners of his mouth.
"Yes," Reishin said.
He crouched down and took hold of Yuma's arm to help him up.
"You're ready to join the guild."
End of Chapter 13