The training grounds had grown in my absence, stretching wider and deeper, carved out to withstand storms of power.
Rough, sunbaked earth bore scars of a thousand battles, uneven and broken, a fitting stage.
Sansir stood between Mirabel and me, sword in hand, his calm voice carrying across the wind.
"This will be a battle of concession. You will not fight to kill, but to test one another. Ready yourselves."
I raised my sword slowly, the white bandages trailing down its length stirring with my mana.
Across from me, Mirabel raised her silver blade.
It gleamed with a brilliance unlike before, brimmed with an overwhelming aura that dwarfed even the strength I once believed she held.
Sansir gave a single sigh. "Begin."
He vanished from sight, leaving only the faintest displacement of air.
Mirabel moved first. Faster. Always faster. Her blade reached me before thought fully caught up.
Once, I would have cowered under that weight. Once, I would have faltered. Once, I would have lost.
But this was not then.
My body flowed right, narrowly avoiding her slash.
Steel cut the air where I had stood.
I twisted and brought my blade toward her chest, but she spun with fluid grace, narrowly escaping, only to lunge back with greater fury.
I parried, redirecting her blow, forcing her momentum downward.
She stumbled half a step, small, but enough. I raised my knee toward her chin, but she vanished in a flicker of light.
A whisper of air grazed my neck, she had reappeared behind me. I spun, catching her thrust, forcing her blade into the ground.
My sword followed in a savage diagonal, striking her shoulder and launching her backward.
I pressed. Raising my blade, I unleashed a tide of black mana, thick with decay, a flood that would have reduced an army to ash.
But she did not flinch.
She walked through it as though through water. As though I had thrown pebbles against the hull of a ship.
I steadied my breath. That strike would have leveled forests. Yet she brushed it aside.
The gap between us was greater than I had thought. Far greater.
I met her eyes. Annoyed that she still seemed to be holding back even now.
Every wall I've broken, every step forward, it felt infinite from below.
Someone looking up at me then might have said I was unreachable. But the truth is worse.
These aren't just higher peaks. Each wall is another level of existence entirely. Infinity is still a measure. This… cannot be measured.
Her blade flashed.
Pain seared across my neck.
I leapt back, releasing ink into the air, shaping it into jagged walls hardened by mana. She slipped through them like wind through leaves.
"Star Cluster," she whispered.
A constellation of red stars flared into being, sharp and merciless, raining toward me.
I cut them down, one by one, blade singing through the air, sparks and smoke cascading around me.
She was already at my side. Another slash. Another shield, water rose just in time. I vaulted above her, heel striking her ribs.
She skidded across the earth and laughed, brushing dust from her cheek. "A little more of that, and I may have to take you seriously, my love."
I gritted my teeth, blood humming in my veins. "So that spell was just a trick?"
"Or," she said lightly, "a pale imitation of the real thing."
A red star bloomed on my chest. Before I could react, it burned through my shirt and detonated. The explosion hurled me into the far wall, stone cracking beneath my weight.
I coughed, rising, blood streaking my lips.
My grip tightened. Illness gnawed faintly at me, but no, it wasn't weakness. She was simply this strong.
I pushed forward.
She stumbled back from the pressure and began forming another spell.
But I was ready. I had been waiting for this.
I couldn't test it during training. I'd only practiced with my sword, cultivated in silence, and studied theory.
But now I could do this. Ink scattered into the air as her spell flew forward.
And in that moment, it was like time stopped.
Information surged into me, raw, fundamental truth.
I understood her magic instantly. As if reading an entire book in a single glance.
She unleashed a nebula, smaller but no less deadly, encased in a bubble of warped mana.
The very fabric of the world buckled. Mana and infons twisted. Reality groaned.
Then the spell vanished. Her eyes widened.
I smiled. "A trick I picked up. Like it?"
She frowned slightly and raised her sword. "Seems unfair."
A wave of pure mana burst from her blade.
So she figured it out that fast?
This only works on structures made of mana. Raw mana itself is something else entirely. It's the world's internal breath, its force of motion.
To rewrite that, I'd need far more power, especially against mana that came from her.
I weaved left and traced my fingers through the air, forming a lance of ink, then hurled it.
Her spell came to meet it, a spear of starlight.
But mine struck first. My ink unraveled her construct and pierced her shoulder.
She coughed, ruggid, and stared at the fading black magic with disbelief. "Impossible… you don't even need to cast it yourself?"
I raised my sword and grinned. "Come on, Mirabel. Pick up the pace."
Before my next thought could even settle, stars, red, white, and blue, appeared all around me.
It was impressive, if nothing else. She wasn't just fast. She was moving beyond perception. I hadn't realized just how far she'd come.
Infons reside within the mind. They fuel mana as sight. When you're moving slower than light, your eyes still reflect reality.
But once you surpass that, once light becomes irrelevant, you begin to see with mana alone.
In that instance, your perception moves as quickly as your thoughts.
And thoughts are faster than any action.
[Nicholas could process information faster than he could swing his sword.]
I chuckled, then swung.
Before the stars could fly inward, I unleashed a devastating wave of water that swept over them.
I noticed her hand clench, but my water had completely absorbed the energy.
She looked surprised. Genuinely surprised. "Hmm. It feels like you've built your entire arsenal to defeat me."
I laughed softly, glancing down at my blade. "Does it?"
Cloth burst outward, limitless, flowing like ribbons of memory, and in an instant, wrapped around her limbs. She flinched, but couldn't move.
At the same time, I threw my sword into the air and clapped my hands together.
The blade transformed midair, reshaping into a massive spear, cascading darkness cloaked in ink, forged entirely of water.
"Here's the culmination of all my training. Sotergramma!"
The spear surged forward, bypassing the constraints of space and time.
It tore through her defenses and plunged straight into her chest.
Much like normal attacks, once you start perceiving things with infons, even attacks that can go past space and time can be perceived, though reacting takes much more skill.
For a fleeting moment, I considered pulling back.
But then I scoffed.
Most of her attacks were already surpassing the constraints of space and time, much like many others.
What's a little transcendence?
Mirabel? To her, that attack was nothing more than child's play.
A hand appeared over my face. It smelled of roses and candy.
The next instant, I was slammed into the ground.
Blood sprayed from my mouth as the sky above split apart, glowing with a translucent light.
I chuckled through the pain and reached up, calling my sword back to my hand.
Then came the spell. A moment's delay, then it fell.
Like a pane of pure energy, collapsing dimensions as it descended. Its complexity was absurd.
I didn't have time to deconstruct it. I wasn't fast enough to dodge.
The only thing I could do was swing, with everything I had.
My strike carved through the air, shredding the cloth that still bound me.
My scabbard appeared in my left hand as the massive plane of light split in two.
I rose from the crater, blood trailing slowly from my lips. "Damn… that was rough."