The air near Elysia and Lisanna, thick and heavy with displaced energy, still hummed with the aftershock of the siblings' first, cataclysmic exchange. They stood in stunned disbelief, the ground before them a spiderweb of deep, blackened fissures radiating from the crater where Orion stood, utterly unmoved.
The sheer velocity at which Orion and Lyra had just clashed was an event horizon they couldn't even begin to comprehend, a speed that rendered their own C-Rank perceptions utterly obsolete.
Though they had sensed Lyra's approach—a spike of raw, violent Aether that felt less like a presence and more like a physical pressure threatening to crush their bones—neither could have mustered even the faintest glimmer of a defensive spell.
Lyra hadn't just unleashed her aura as a challenge; it was a blaring, instinctual warning for them to flee, a sonic boom preceding a strike that would have obliterated them without a second thought.
Orion, however, simply shook his head, a faint, mocking smile playing on his lips.
"You know what I mean," he chided, his voice a calm counterpoint to the lingering chaos. "Even when applying overwhelming force, we must maintain absolute control over that force to achieve truly efficient results, correct?"
"Tch," Lyra clicked her tongue, the sound sharp and dismissive. She would have savaged anyone else with a scathing retort, but Orion was the one person whose pronouncements on the nature of power she grudgingly acknowledged. Still, her pride was a blade that would never be sheathed.
She waved a hand, brushing aside his lecture. "Yeah, yeah. Save the sermon. You kicked my ass in our last spar, but that was then. Today… I've got a new trick for you to taste."
The cracking of her knuckles was no mere sound; it was an audible manifestation of the Aether coiling within her, a low, rumbling promise of devastation.
A dangerous, eager smile finally spread across Orion's face, replacing his detached calm. The predator within him stirred. Swirls of crystalline ice and radiant light, like twin satellites of annihilation, began to orbit his form.
"Is that so?" he remarked, his voice dropping into a low, thrilling timbre. "Then come. I'm just dying to see how I'll beat your ass once again."
"Oh boy," Lisanna chuckled, a nervous energy bubbling within her as she and Elysia instinctively retreated, putting even more distance between themselves and the impending apocalypse. "How long do you think she'll last this time?"
Elysia snorted, a gesture of derision that failed to hide the rapt fascination in her silver-blue eyes. "I'll grant her a few more seconds than last time. It's quite amusing to see that arrogant mouth of hers get shut up, for at least a little while."
The artificial sky above the sprawling, grassy plain seemed to hold its breath.
A profound, ringing silence descended, a stillness so absolute it was more terrifying than any war cry.
To Elysia and Lisanna, now watching from what they hoped was a safe distance, the siblings' battle stances were not merely odd; they were nonsensical. They stood completely relaxed, arms hanging loosely at their sides, their postures betraying no hint of guard or preparation. It was the stance of two people engaged in casual conversation, not a high-stakes duel between monsters.
Yet, the very fabric of the pocket dimension told a different story. The air had undergone a subtle but undeniable transformation, acquiring a sharpening quality that seemed to cut at the senses, making it feel thin and brittle.
The ambient Aether, usually a gentle, life-giving hum in the background, was now a coiled serpent of potential energy, vibrating with a terrible, silent promise of violence. It was a battle that had already begun on a plane beyond their perception.
In the infinitesimal space between one heartbeat and the next, Lyra's body twitched.
It was a movement so microscopic it barely registered as motion at all, more like a flicker in reality, a glitch in the world's code.
And then, she was gone.
The space she had occupied was now utterly empty, the air rushing in to fill the vacuum with a sound like a gasp. To Lisanna and Elysia's wide, uncomprehending eyes, she had simply ceased to exist, erased from the world without a trace.
Only Orion, his senses forged in the lawless, kill-or-be-killed depths of the Sump and now amplified by a System that perceived the world on a quantum level, could register the ghost she left behind. It was a fleeting, shimmering afterimage, a memory of her presence that his mind could just barely process.
Simultaneously, a primal alarm, a screech of pure instinct honed by countless near-death encounters, exploded through his consciousness. It screamed of imminent, lethal danger hurtling towards his right blind spot.
There was no time to think, no moment for strategy. There was only the brutal, perfect calculus of instinct. Frost spilled across the air like the frozen breath of a god as Orion, in a single, fluid motion born of desperation and power, swung his ice-encased fist towards the screaming void his senses had identified.
His gauntlet carved a brilliant, azure arc through the air, leaving a trail of crystallized atmosphere in its wake.
CRACK-BOOM!
A ferocious, triumphant grin was plastered on Lyra's face as she reappeared in reality, her fist wreathed in a furious golden aura of vibrating Aether, smashing directly into Orion's block.
The resulting sound was not one of flesh and ice, but of tectonic plates grinding against one another deep within the planet's core. A fierce, circular gale erupted from the point of impact, a concussive force that tore at the grassy plain, ripping it up in great chunks and forcing Elysia and Lisanna to throw up desperate shields to avoid being swept away.
This time, however, Lyra did not retreat. The impossible kinetic energy of her charge was not dispersed; it was masterfully redirected. The very moment her fist made contact, one of her legs had already become a blur of shimmering, vibrational Aether. Her body, a perfectly honed conduit for her merciless power, allowed for an instantaneous, seamless follow-up.
Her knee shot upwards like a piston, a golden spearhead aimed directly for Orion's chin with a velocity that shattered the known laws of physics.
Orion's eyes narrowed, a flicker of genuine surprise registering deep within him. His instincts, which had just saved his life, were now screaming of a fatal, decapitating threat mere inches from his face. It was a move too impossibly fast to block, too terrifyingly close to dodge through any conventional means.
And in that sliver of a microsecond, as the world held its breath, he finally unleashed his true, monstrous advantage.
[Cognitive Acceleration]
The world snapped.
Reality fractured, shattering into a million frozen moments, and slowed to an agonizing, molasses-like crawl. The thunderous roar of their previous impact became a low, drawn-out groan that vibrated through his bones. The swirling wind became a gentle, lazy vortex of dust and grass.
And Lyra's knee—a golden projectile of certain death—became an elegantly rising comet, its trajectory perfectly visible, its every shimmering particle of Aether laid bare to his god-like perception.
He could count the individual blades of grass being torn from the ground by the sheer pressure of her attack. Inches from his face, he could see the air itself compressing, distorting, and super-heating around the golden knee.
A smirk touched Orion's lips. It was a slow, deliberate, and utterly infuriating expression in his accelerated time. He moved his upper body with perfect, economical grace, leaning back just enough for the lethal golden arc to skim past his chin, the wind from its passage fluttering his hair in slow motion.
In the same seamless, unhurried instant, his own leg, now encased in a shell of hard light that glowed like a miniature sun, launched forward. It was a vicious, horizontal side-kick aimed squarely at Lyra's exposed, undefended flank.
Lyra's own Aether-honed instincts screamed bloody murder. She couldn't see the attack coming, not in any way she could process, but she could feel the world itself screaming a warning at her.
With no time for a proper defense, she desperately, chaotically surged a raw, untamed stream of vibrating Aether from her side, forming a makeshift, invisible shield.
THUD!
The sound was a deep, sickening howl as solidified light met pure vibration.
Lyra was flung sideways as if struck by a meteor, her body tumbling uncontrollably as she skidded across the grassy field for dozens of meters.
Her boots carved deep, smoking trenches in the earth before she expertly flipped in midair, landing in a low crouch to absorb the catastrophic momentum just before she would have been smashed into the facility's far wall.
The ground around her was a web of cracks, and the air hung heavy and charged, swirling with dust and displaced, warring energies.
Elysia and Lisanna were utterly dumbfounded. They had been forced back another several steps by the aftershocks, and neither could properly process the violent ballet that had just transpired.
All they saw was Lyra vanish, a blur of motion, a deafening sound, and then their supposed ally was back-flipping through the air like a broken doll.
They exchanged a wide-eyed glance, a silent acknowledgment passing between them. They, more than anyone else in the world, knew just how monstrous the siblings were, but this was something else entirely. This wasn't a mere gap in power; it was a fundamental division in the nature of combat itself, a yawning chasm that separated the talented from the truly monstrous. The power they had shown when suppressing their parents and the Commander was nothing but a child's game compared to this.
Lyra clicked her teeth, the sound sharp with irritation as she pushed herself to her feet. That annoying, all-knowing glint was back in Orion's eyes.
She snorted. "I don't know what that perception-warping skill of yours is, but it really makes you hundreds of times more annoying."
Orion shrugged, his light-encased leg dissolving back into harmless, glittering motes. "Simply be faster than I can perceive. Then it won't be an issue."
A harsh, confident laugh escaped Lyra's lips, devoid of any real humor.
"Heh. You're right." She rolled her shoulders, a series of sharp pops echoing in the tense silence. "I've been holding back, training my control. That earlier speed… that was just me stretching my legs. Now," she said, her eyes gleaming with a predatory, ferocious light, "allow me to wipe that shit-eating grin from your face for good."
"Come," Orion merely beckoned with a single hand, his expression calm and inviting, an open challenge that was more insulting than any taunt.
That was all the invitation she needed. The Aether around Lyra's hands shimmered violently, condensing with a low, dangerous hum. In seconds, the vibrating energy solidified, taking the form of a pair of dual short swords. Their blades were translucent and golden, humming with a power so potent it made the air around them tremble and warp. They were the perfect length, long enough for devastating reach but weighted for blinding speed and lethal precision.
Simultaneously, a faint, almost invisible aura of the same golden energy enveloped every inch of her body. It was a force so potent, a compression of Aether so dense, that the ground beneath her began to crackle and splinter under the strain.
Orion responded in kind. Faint streams of azure ice and golden light, the paradoxical energies of absolute zero and absolute brilliance, began to rapidly swirl around him like a miniature galaxy. With a single thought, they coalesced, condensing in his right hand until he held a magnificent spear of crystalline ice, its surface glittering with small, incandescent sparks of captured light, humming with a terrifying, silent power.
Lyra didn't hesitate. She moved like the wind, a mere afterimage left in her wake as she closed the distance in an instant, her vibrating swords slicing horizontally in a gleaming arc aimed for Orion's chest.
A heavy, suffocating pressure descended upon him, the very air seeming to thicken and resist his presence, turning into a hostile quagmire. Her speed had indeed increased dramatically with the application of her full-body aura.
But it still wasn't enough.
A faint smile touched Orion's lips as he thrust his light-glittering ice spear forward to intercept. Midway through his thrust, however, a strange, viscous resistance met him. It felt as if he were trying to punch through heavy water. He glanced down, his accelerated senses instantly picking up the cause.
Lyra wasn't just attacking him; her swords were constantly unleashing microscopic, near-invisible streams of vibrating Aether into the surrounding air, creating a dense, disruptive field of force—a quagmire of vibrational dissonance designed to slow and sabotage any Aether-based attack that entered its domain.
Lyra's smile widened into a vicious sneer as she sensed the brief, fractional sluggishness in her brother's counter.
That was the only opening she needed.
In the same fluid motion, she used the momentum of her charge to jump, shooting upwards with breathtaking agility. At the apex of her leap, she twisted her body like a striking hawk, bringing both vibrating swords down in a deadly, cleaving arc aimed straight for Orion's head.
This time, Orion's eyes narrowed. His Cognitive Acceleration surged, pushing his perception to an even higher, more transcendent plane. He moved like a phantom, a blur of motion faster than the wind he displaced. His shimmering Ice Spear pulsed, and an overwhelming, apocalyptic surge of Aether flooded into it.
One single, explosive thrust shattered the dense field of vibrating streams around him as if it were a pane of brittle glass.
An immediate, second thrust tore straight up, a rising dragon of ice and light, meeting Lyra's descending short swords.
CLANG!
The sound was a thunderous, howling screech of protesting energy, a sound that seemed to tear at the fabric of the dimension itself. A shockwave, now fully visible to the naked eye as a ripple in space, blasted outwards in all directions.
The ground beneath them didn't just crack; it burst, sending massive chunks of earth and grass flying into the air like shrapnel.
The sheer, ungodly rebounding force launched Lyra high into the air, a ragdoll in a storm of her own making. The blood in her veins rumbled as an invasive, frigid energy attempted to course through her system, threatening to freeze her from the inside out.
Gritting her teeth and forcing down the rising taste of copper in her throat, Lyra frantically twisted her body in midair, desperately purging Orion's invading Aether even as she fought to regain control of her trajectory.