Blue fire rises from Cassio’s shoulders as if someone lit will-o’-the-wisps inside his pauldrons.

It isn’t real flame. At least not the kind I know. The air doesn’t shimmer with heat, and the stone around his feet doesn’t darken—but the light rises from the joints of his breastplate and his shoulders with a liquid glow, deep, almost oceanic. It runs across the platinum-blue plate, slides into the ornamental grooves, and travels down his arms until it meets the spear.

The weapon answers.

The steel leaf opens. The point lengthens, flattens, expands backward into a wide, curved blade adorned with bright ribbing. The shaft thickens at certain points, thins at others, until the entire silhouette stops being a spear and becomes something heavier. More brutal. The shimmer against the stone is clear to me now—a sapphire halberd, imposing and absurd, with a blade shaped like the metallic fin of some creature built to cut open sea.

I’d heard about this on the front.

The mutation of the ’Sapphire sailfish man.’

That was what the soldiers called it when Cassio used this skill before he died in the other timeline. Back then, I thought the name was ridiculous. Now, seeing the weapon up close, with that blue shimmering across the blade like light trapped inside deep water, the nickname feels less like a joke and more like a bad attempt to describe something nobody wanted to face twice.

Even with the massive weapon, Cassio holds it with one hand.

He widens his stance to two shoulder-widths, bends his knees, and extends his right arm behind him—keeping the halberd back along his own line as if its weight meant nothing. His left arm points at me, two fingers aligned in my direction, like a sight.

I raise Eventide in front of my body.

I can’t waste a second trying to understand everything. The weapon’s transformation already tells me enough. Different reach. Different weight. Different timing. The fighting style is going to shift with it.

Then I notice the worst detail.

The blade is now made with a kind of sapphire.

There’s no more polished steel throwing light onto the floor. No more white streak moving before the sound. The method that gave me a chance against his spear has vanished with the old shape of the weapon.

A cold sweat runs down my back.

’Well... that’s over.’

Thinking about defense became a bad joke.

Cassio vanishes from his starting position faster than my body can track. No reflection on the stone. No useful shadow. Nothing to give me the line before the impact. My instincts scream ’right lateral,’ but the speed is so far above my rank that even that doesn’t come with certainty. I only know it’s a cutting strike when the halberd is already arriving at my neck.

Somehow, my hand turns.

Eventide’s grip shifts by itself—an inch, maybe less—and the shadow-blade appears in the path of the strike. The halberd slams against it from the side, like an axe trying to split a tree in half.

The impact rips my weight off the ground.

For an instant, I think my arms have been torn from my shoulders. Then I realize I’m in the air. The world turns in a way that’s too light, too wrong, and the entire arena passes through my vision as a blurred line before my back finds one of the Oathring’s perimeter pillars.

I hit it hard enough to cough up blood.

The pain arrives just after, spreading along the right side of my chest as if someone had jammed iron bars between my ribs and tried to pry space open from inside. I bring my hand to my side without thinking, as if pressing the pain could shut something off.

[Damage Received: -490 OXI]

The number appears and vanishes while I try to put air back into my lungs.

Cassio is already coming again.

All the speed I had to claw out of my body at the start of the fight—burning OXI through my legs, gambling on surprise—he’s using now as if it were a casual step. The difference isn’t only force. It’s efficiency. At least that’s what it looks like while I can barely stay standing.

The next strike comes from above.

I don’t even look properly. If I try to confirm the trajectory, I’ll arrive late. I just move Eventide upward and lock my jaw.

The halberd lands on my blade.

The metallic detonation echoes across the entire Oathring. Maybe the entire neighborhood. The floor beneath my feet shatters as if a stick of dynamite were buried under it, cracking in circles and throwing fragments against my legs. On instinct, I use Pressure Step upward, against the strike, trying to soften the force before it travels through my arms and ends up in my skull.

It was the right move.

It was also torture.

My ribs respond with a pain so violent I scream before I can hold it back. Blood runs from my nose, hot, and my vision drops out for less than a second.

[Damage Received: -402 OXI]

Cassio leaps back with the absurd ease he used to step in.

I don’t think twice.

Two smoke grenades appear in my hand and hit the stone almost together. The dry pop is swallowed by a thick gray cloud rising between us like a dirty wall. I suppress my aura as far down as I can and run to the other side of the Oathring, pivoting my feet between each step so the sound of my boots doesn’t draw a clean line through the smoke.

’I’m glad the academy survival kit has smoke grenades.’ 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

[OXI: 1,506 / 2,500]

Almost a thousand OXI in two exchanges, counting defense, damage, and the cost of staying alive.

If this keeps up, I die.

I swallow five OXI Candies one after the other. The sugar burns on the tongue, the effect arrives fast, and the familiar pressure returns to fill my limbs.

[OXI: 2,500 / 2,500]

I think about the healing potion. Hesitate, hand still near the inventory. The damage is severe. Even if a potion started closing something, the pain wouldn’t fade fast enough to make this a clean solution—on the contrary. Accelerated healing multiplies the pain several times over.

Maybe I’d only waste time trying to dull a fight that has already moved past the point of comfort.

So I test.

I straighten my body slowly. Let the pain rise to its limit. Adopt an attacking stance. The ribs complain, the right side almost gives, but my base doesn’t break.

Bearable.

Bad, but bearable.

The smoke begins to thin.

I activate Memory of Lightwaves.

From the other side of the cloud, all that’s probably visible of me are two golden eyes burning—and the golden smoke from them blending into the gray.