The first strike came without warning.
One moment we were locked in tense negotiation, the next, Kaguro's team exploded into motion with the coordinated precision of a machine designed for killing. No dramatic speeches, no final taunts—just professional violence delivered with surgical efficiency.
"Scatter formation!" Dmitri shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos as earth erupted from the ground in defensive barriers. "Protect the client! Jane, high ground! Kaito, stay mobile!"
I barely had time to process his commands before someone was trying to separate my head from my shoulders.
The attacker moved like liquid lightning, his blade carving through the air where I'd been standing a heartbeat before. I stumbled backward, my practice sword rising in a clumsy parry that sent shockwaves up my arms and nearly knocked the weapon from my grip.
"Too slow," my opponent said with professional dispassion, already moving for a follow-up strike.
Fire erupted from my hands in desperate response—not the controlled techniques I'd been practicing, but raw panic given form. The flames scattered his attack but did nothing to slow his advance.
Around me, the battle unfolded with terrifying intensity.
Dmitri was reshaping the entire battlefield, earth rising and falling like ocean waves as he created cover, blocked attacks, and tried to control the flow of combat. His movements were economical, precise, turning the forest clearing into a maze of stone barriers and tactical advantages.
"Northeast barrier, thirty degrees!" he called out, earth rising to block an attack I hadn't even seen coming. "Jane, suppression fire on the left flank!"
Lightning answered his call.
Jane stood atop one of Dmitri's earth pillars, and the nervous, paperwork-obsessed guild member I thought I knew had been replaced by someone who wielded electricity like a conductor directing a deadly orchestra. Precise bolts of lightning lanced through the air, forcing Kaguro's team to adjust their positions and breaking up their coordinated assault.
"Sorry everyone," Jane called down, his voice carrying an odd note of regret as another lightning strike forced two attackers to separate. "I didn't want to have to use these techniques again."
His words were lost in the thunder of his own attacks, but something in his tone suggested layers of meaning I didn't understand.
One of the enemy team members rushed Jane's position, moving with inhuman speed up the vertical earth wall. Jane's response was immediate—not just lightning, but something else. The air around the attacker shimmered, and suddenly there were three Janes on the pillar instead of one.
The attacker hesitated for a split second, unsure which target was real.
It was enough. Lightning erupted from all three figures simultaneously, though only one bolt carried actual force. The attacker went down hard, muscles spasming from electrical overload.
"Phantom arts?" I gasped, barely avoiding another sword strike. "Jane knows phantom arts?"
"Focus on not dying!" Dmitri shouted back, sending a wave of stone spikes toward my opponent. "Personal histories later!"
But even as we fought with everything we had, it was becoming clear that we were hopelessly outmatched.
Kaguro moved through our defensive positions like death given form. Dmitri's earth barriers slowed him for heartbeats at most before that curved blade carved through stone like it was morning mist. Jane's lightning strikes forced him to adjust his approach but never seemed to actually threaten him.
And when he moved—truly moved, not just the casual grace he'd shown during negotiations—it was like watching something that existed outside normal physics.
One moment he was twenty meters away, engaging Jane's phantom duplicates. The next, he was behind Dmitri, that curved sword singing through the air toward my teammate's exposed back.
"Dmitri!" I screamed, launching myself forward with desperate speed.
I wasn't going to make it. None of us were fast enough to—
Jane appeared between them in a crackling burst of lightning-enhanced movement, his own weapons—twin daggers wreathed in electrical energy—rising to block Kaguro's strike.
The impact sent shockwaves through the air. Jane held the block for a moment that stretched like eternity, lightning playing along the edges of steel while his phantom arts created a dozen false positions that made it impossible to target him accurately.
Then Kaguro's other hand moved, and I realized the sword strike had been a feint.
A dagger—short, curved, and moving too fast to track—punched through Jane's defenses and buried itself in Dmitri's side.
Dmitri's scream of pain cut through the sounds of battle like a knife through silk.
He went down hard, blood spreading across his shirt as earth armor crumbled around the wound. The dagger had found the gap between protective plates with surgical precision, sliding between ribs to cause maximum damage without immediately fatal injury.
"Dmitri!" Jane's voice cracked with something beyond fear—guilt, rage, and a darkness I'd never heard from him before.
"I'm… I'm alright," Dmitri gasped, but the blood pooling beneath him suggested otherwise. "Keep fighting. Protect the client."
Jane knelt beside him, hands already glowing with healing lightning that danced across Dmitri's wound. But his face was transforming, the nervous guild administrator disappearing behind an expression of cold fury that made my skin crawl.
"I swore I would never use that technique again," he said, his voice carrying harmonics that seemed to echo from multiple directions. "I promised myself after what happened last time…"
"Jane," Dmitri whispered, gripping his teammate's arm with bloody fingers. "Don't. Whatever you're thinking, don't. The consequences—"
"The consequences are mine to bear," Jane replied, standing slowly as phantom energy began to swirl around him like visible malice. "Some things are worth the price."
Kaguro, who had been moving to finish Dmitri, paused as Jane's power shifted into something entirely different. The playful illusions and tactical lightning were replaced by something that made the air itself feel wrong.
"Interesting," Kaguro said, genuine curiosity coloring his voice. "Phantom arts of that caliber are rarely seen in someone so young. What tragedy taught you to wield darkness with such proficiency?"
Jane's reply came from three different directions simultaneously, his voice carrying the weight of old pain and fresh determination.
"That's not your concern. Your concern should be what I'm about to do to you."
The forest around us began to change. Shadows deepened despite the morning sun, sounds became muffled and distorted, and the very air seemed to thicken with psychological pressure that made my thoughts feel sluggish and confused.
This wasn't the low-level phantom arts Jane had been using for tactical advantage. This was something far more dangerous—the kind of technique that could permanently damage minds if used incorrectly.
"Jane," I called out, trying to cut through the growing confusion. "Whatever you're planning, we can find another way!"
"There is no other way," Jane replied, and now his voice seemed to come from inside my own head. "Dmitri is injured because I held back. Because I was afraid of what I might become if I used these techniques again."
The phantom energy around him was building to levels that made my teeth ache and my vision blur. Whatever technique he was preparing, it was going to be devastating.
And from the expression on Kaguro's face—the first time he'd shown anything approaching concern—it might actually be dangerous enough to change the course of this battle.
"You're going to hurt yourself," Dmitri gasped from where he lay bleeding. "Those techniques always take more than you think you can give."
"I know," Jane said simply. "But some prices are worth paying."
The air around him began to scream with phantom energy, and I realized that my quiet, paperwork-obsessed teammate was about to show us all why some techniques were considered too dangerous for regular use.
Even if it destroyed him in the process.