She had just pulled her own will right back into her soul, even repairing it completely.
The Knight understood its stance against her, and had to control the battle to keep up, but she maintained an on-point effort, not pushing higher or lower. Quu was visibly distraught over having to keep up with the Knight herself. On the months end – she made a decision to do something beyond the current scopes of this battle.
And at this moment, all of it just suddenly fell short, she had been hinting at it, but she had not outright used it. The Knight realised it when she said that she's on a higher operating field than an incredibly dangerous dark knight. On that front, she did not fail to deliver.
She grabbed onto the stationary knife; this did not even leave a scratch on her armour this time around. The Knight was not going to enhance this knife because it was still the most useful and reliable weapon in this battle – but after she grabbed it – the Knight sent it straight to the inventory on instinct. A second later she twisted her fingers into her palm and closed her hand – this would have shattered the blade, the Knight was still not sure how, but of this it was certain.
The Knight did not even bother going invisible or using the other skills for a leverage, because, it believed every word she said early – about how she was far beyond just an average incredibly dangerous dark knight – every bit of it. The Knight then began to teleport away as t sensed something, but she kept running and redirecting the Knight's movement, blocking escape completely.
The Knight had created multiple dodging scenarios, all accurate to the tea, but in all of them, she had cornered it. In fact, this running around was just a desperate gambit for it to think up of another way to dodge the incoming hit.
'Movement seventeen flash can be used to counter an upward dash…
Pumping the void into the legs, and kicking from a platform of air, followed by an insurmountable leap and teleport? Not possible, the air would have to be sturdier than the void augmentation, and currently beyond capabilities…
Alternative route found, Anchor on left kick, and use flash wave to rebound the left leg…
Interesting path detected, ignore hyperdrive section four ample six, and summon dread…'
In just an instance, it created, fabricated, and erased multiple scenes, all possible but each possessing just enough room for error on her own end that the Knight knew she would never make, just enough room for her to counter, which meant she would definitely counter.
She possessed the skill [War Flow] – but even then, this was not enough – she also kept pausing the movement of miniscule air particles, just enough to divert all of the Knight's movements, and by accelerating the Knight more than it wanted, she was able to keep the Knight on its toes – even if it had the mental resilience to somehow move without overshooting or undershooting, not even once the entire battle, not even on the Ui scale.
For her – this was probably the most terrifying part, the fact that even though she held every advantage in their battle, it somehow kept out pacing her in strategy – pushing further than her mind was able to keep up with.
'Even destroyers did not possess this level of intuition, intuition? No this is absolute certainty; it's not predicting my moves it is keeping ahead of them even before I realise that I had to come up with a plan – this has to change – I am not losing – never!'
That 'never!' resounded throughout her body, like a wave of revitalising energy.
She then cornered the Knight and appeared above it and touched the Knights breastplate.
The Knight was almost horizontal, mid spin – on a swerve, about to dive down, so this was as if she was using her hand to balance on the flat ground, with both her feet in the air. It was like a serene yet chaotic painting of an experienced gymnast on the cold surface of a foe in battle. Like someone had paused their dance in the skies to take a painting.
All the hyper movement slowed down around them, these were the flashes of the speeds they were moving at. So ahead that their movements had not yet caught up. This single moment was held in place, and time. The Knight's mind could operate at faster speeds than this, so it happened to have enough room through all the strategizing to remember something.
'Avarice…'
She was nowhere near a void lord's level, but in this moments, she was moving like how Avarice was when she was holding back against the Knight.
Time had not stopped, and no-one had either – this was the human equivalent to watching one's life flash before their eyes. But contradictorily, life was not flashing it had halted, as if making sure that both of them had enough time to capture all of it and remember just what it is that they were doing. Making sure neither forget.
This was no bind, the air around the Knight could not move, and so could the Knight. She did this so quickly the Knight was caught – it could not teleport, it could not move, it could not dodge.
Even after seeing all of this coming, it had failed to come up with a single way to avoid it – she had set the Knight up for another inevitable strike – but this one was different – it gave the Knight flashes of watching Avarice wound up for her strike – unlike the last time, it could not dodge this – nothing could.
She was there flowing in the sky, her palm on the Knights cold chest.
Rings of light slowly appeared around her arm, forming luminous bands of light, similar to the ones she had used to shred the Knight's right arm clean off.
The day light vanished, all flowing into her bands of light.
It was as if she was the destroyer, because even the hyper space around them lost its shine compared to the brilliant shine from those bands.
They made a drill/cone shape. The smallest right on her wrist, the largest right around her shoulder.
Her legs were as high as could be.
Her inverted eyes, glared into the Knights soul like glow. Absorbed in this moment.
Her hand being the tip of this drill, sharply pointing at the Knight.
Then a clean but ravenous wave went through the Knight, its armour, its body, even the soul, managing to clear a hole right through all of it.
This also sent the Knight collapsing onto the floor. Upon impact the Knight sent an ouranquake so massive that it pushed the sea back on all the shores of Nhoils. Then a high-rise tide formed, all around the continent, a whole kilometre high, as the water came rushing back. The waters then fell onto the dry shores, flooding the cities on the shore, even if they managed to survive this rush from the ocean, it was quite the wave.
The crater formed by the Knight had crushed all the solidified glass to dust and had even turned the landing spot right into hot plasma. No noise came from this impact – to be more accurate, believe it or not, it was way above the Knight's hearing range.
This was the second time the Knight had fallen in battle.
This wave was just the full version of the hit she had used on the first day. The Knight had used three shield to block it – the syn-echo she called it. There was no denying it, she had used the power over movement and another, the Knight had not figured it out. This was the power over conception. She used both to send this massive beam through the Knight.
She possessed two powers, like most knight Bannerets, and her second one was the power over conception. A complicated yet dangerous power.
She was right, the Knight had not yet gained the clearance of a knight Banneret, so it did not know about these. In the knight archives were those detailing heroes in greater detail. And in there existed knowledge about powers most effective against the darkness and could only be learned if one had already mastered another.
These were powers that made the dark knights labelled as incredibly dangerous so damning.
She could use this power in a manner of ways. It allowed her to either control or imbue concepts. Earlier she had imbued the baren lands of the concept – vitality, forcing it to grow lush grass for her to sit. She had also imbued the concept of durability on her tea set and the grass, thus her shock when Red Scorch turned all of it to cinders.
The only side effect is that the concepts she used had to be transferred or siphoned out of something that already existed. For example – her armour was made of the condensed concept of the void beings she had defeated before they turned into nothing.
Till now she was surprised the Knight had been able to break through the armour. She had taken so many concepts from their battle and formed them into many things, but the Knight had countered most of them.
It had even taken the concept of attraction she had gathered from magnets throughout her life and used it to bind storms to her hand.
She had also used the concept of inevitability to make sure the Knight could not dodge. This was a concept she was most familiar with.
She could grab a beings concept and shape it. She could also manipulate the concepts of things around her. She had manipulated the concept of the void dwellers into that of armour instead of the concept of mock souls – even if it was a slight and lucky change, she had not been able to replicate, thus she treasured her armour – which was now in shambles.
Her armour was not strange, almost all those of Bachelor and above ranks, crafted their armour using their powers or some other tool, but it was themselves. Only getting tweaked later by specialists like Karen. Even the Knight had made its armour and sword, even if it had forgotten it all.
Somehow – for the entire month, she had not even been able to touch the Knight's concept.
'I'm sure that it was not constantly trying to keep itself from being tempered. It was more like the concept is so mutilated that I couldn't even do a minor alteration – how is that even possible!? Or maybe the concept is so far beyond me that I can't even touch it – I guess you are no ordinary destroyer, are you?'
She had done many things – using this to imbed a strong concept of durability into cups, or that of vitality into the baren lands, making them instantly sprout fields of grass. She had even tempered with the mock soul of a destroyer – even if she had gotten lucky that her opponent had not realised and made the armour she had – on that very same night, it even saved her from another strike from another destroyer.
Yet, through all that – she could not change this concept – and she had tried.
Quu was still not perfect in this as she was over movement, but she was incredible at it. Even still this was a first for her. Earlier she watched it survive the concept of destruction from a strike she had received from a destroyer a while back and had stored, a destroyer she hoped to never cross paths with; all pressed into the relentless motion of a punch she threw at it.
By using both these powers, she pushed her limits to the point of exhaustion. And after failing for a whole month to defeat it without this exertion, she gave up and used her power over conception to take the concept of light and spin it in the air slices of movement she had collected from their fighting, enough to drill a gaping hole that went straight through the Knight.
'In the end – you are still just a destroyer; the light rejects you all the same.'
She then looked at her sword and laughed a pained and forced laugh, coughing up blood. 'I didn't even have to use you today – next time buddy.'
She looked at the massive hundred metre Knight, and the gaping tunnel like hole she had made, then the dark knight Quu-Quu left the decimated lands.
[Volume 3: System Update – part two (The Dark Knights)]